Happy 70th anniversary, Social Security

[dweller]

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer
August 9, 2005—Sunday, August 14, will mark the 70th birthday of the
signing of the Social Security Act in 1935 by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. He was surrounded at the signing by a group of 19 fellow
Democrats plus one Progressive.

I suggest that recipients, their kids and grandkids and friends everywhere
throw Social Security parties on the 14th for the venerable system. Light a
few candles for its continued life, and then sharpen your activist axes and
wits to make sure no one threatens the program’s future.

Social Security taxes were actually collected for the first time In January
1937 and the first one-time, lump sum payments were made the same
month. Regular ongoing monthly benefits started in January 1940. The
program’s medical adjunct, Medicare, was signed into law on July 30,
1965, by President Lyndon Johnson, and beneficiaries were first able to
sign-up for the program on July 1, 1966.

We have George Putsch Bush to thank for the holes punched in
Medicare’s prescription drug law to benefit drug makers, HMOs and private
insurance plans, as a consequence of the nefarious Improvement and
Modernization Act of 2003, which is neither improvement nor
modernization, but a kick in the pockets to seniors. See Evelyn Pringle’s
“Medicare prescription drug law?countdown to 2006.”

http://onlinejournal.com/ss/080905Mazza/080905mazza.html

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