Opinion

Alf Landon, 1936 Republican candidate for president, attacked Social Security as a philosophical and economic disaster.Courtesy photo

September 09, 2012 2:00 AM

The debate over national health care dubbed "ObamaCare" has been going on for many years. After the bill was placed into law, the Supreme Court was asked to make a decision whether or not the law was constitutional. If one looks back in history to 1935, when the Social Security Act was being debated during a presidential election, one can clearly see the similarities.

Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican candidate for president, spoke of problems we are hearing today. Landon made what he called "the bungling and waste" of Social Security the key to his presidential campaign, and his opposition to Social Security, along with the arguments President Franklin Roosevelt voiced in defending Social Security against Landon, offers a history lesson that deserves our attention.

Alf Landon's speech attacked Social Security, which was due to begin collecting contributions on Jan. 1, 1937, as a philosophical and economic disaster. He stated: "This law is unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."

This does sound like the Republican arguments of the 2012 election.

Landon argued that Social Security was "paternal government," at its worst. "It assumes that Americans are irresponsible. It assumes that old-age pensions are necessary because Americans lack the foresight to provide for their old age." The contribution Social Security required from the employer, Landon argued, was sure to be "imposed" on the consumer, while the contribution Social Security required from the worker was too much for him to bear.

History is an interesting thing to read and understand. If one would change Alf Landon's name to Mitt Romney, or most of the Republican leadership, the text would have the same concepts.

Landon went on to state that, "As if that were not enough, the "vast army of clerks" required to administer Social Security, would create a bloated bureaucracy that would be a "cruel hoax" on American workers. There was, he predicted, "every probability that the cash they pay in will be used for current deficits and new extravagances," and in the end impoverishes the system. "If the present compulsory insurance plan remains in force, our old people are only too apt to find the cupboard bare."

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Those who ignore history vote for GOP