Editing Social Security Act (section)

==Background and history==
{{Further|History of Social Security in the United States|History of health care reform in the United States}}
[[File:Signing Of The Social Security Act.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] signs the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ssa.gov/history/1930.html |title=History 1930 |publisher= [[Social Security Administration]] |access-date= May 21, 2009}}</ref>]]
Industrialization and the urbanization in the 20th century created many new social problems and transformed ideas of how society and the government should function together because of them. As industry expanded, cities grew quickly to keep up with demand for labor. Tenement houses were built quickly and poorly, cramming new migrants from farms and Southern and Eastern European immigrants into tight and unhealthy spaces. Work spaces were even more unsafe.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Butler|first1=Chris|title= "The Social Impact of Industrialization," The Flow of History|url=http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/eme/17/fc113.|website=Flow of History|access-date=24 October 2016}}</ref>

By the 1930s, the United States was one of the few modern industrial countries in which people faced the Depression without any national system of social security, though a handful of states had poorly-funded old-age insurance programs.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=260}} The federal government had provided pensions to veterans in the aftermath of the Civil War and other wars, and some states had established voluntary old-age pension systems, but otherwise, the United States had little experience with [[social insurance]] programs.{{sfn |McJimsey|2000|p=105}} For most American workers, [[retirement]] during old age was not a realistic option.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|p=261}} In the 1930s, the physician [[Francis Townsend]] galvanized support for his pension proposal, which called for the federal government to issue direct $200-a-month payments to the elderly.{{sfn |McJimsey|2000|pp=105–107}} Roosevelt was attracted to the general thinking behind Townsend's plan because it would provide for those no longer capable of working, stimulate demand in the economy, and decrease the supply of labor.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|pp=257–258, 371}} In 1934, the Dill-Connery bill for federal funding of state pensions programs, passed the House of Representatives and came near passage in the Senate that May. According to one study, ‘Roosevelt took ‘no open stand on the bill, but called supporters to the White House and persuaded them to delay passage until the administration prepared its own, "more comprehensive version.”’<ref>Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work by Benjamin Hunnicutt, 1988, P.221</ref> 

A similar delay took place in relation to unemployment insurance. In February 1934, the Wagner-Lewis bill was introduced,<ref>SOCIAL SECURITY IN THE UNITED STATES An Analysis and Appraisal of the Federal Social Secutity Act by Paul H. Douglas, MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. 1936, P.21</ref> which sought to establish a system of unemployment insurance. The Wagner-Lewis bill was favored by Roosevelt, although Republicans and more conservative Democrats strongly opposed it and (as noted by one study) “was not pushed by the administration with any real vigor. Nevertheless, many close observers believed that had Roosevelt taken a decided stand in favor of the bill it would have been passed by Congress. As with the Dill-Connery bill, the Wagner-Lewis bill failed to pass. According to friends of Roosevelt’s, “his only purpose was to have the problems studied more carefully and that he believed public sentiment was not yet sufficiently crystallized in favor of such a program.”<ref>SOCIAL SECURITY IN THE UNITED STATES An Analysis and Appraisal of the Federal Social Secutity Act by Paul H. Douglas, MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. 1936,  P.25-26</ref>  

In 1934, Roosevelt charged the Committee on Economic Security, chaired by Secretary of Labor [[Frances Perkins]], with developing an old-age pension program, an [[unemployment insurance]] system, and a [[national health insurance|national health care]] program. The proposal for a national health care system was dropped, but the committee developed an unemployment insurance program that would be largely administered by the states. The committee also developed an old-age plan; at Roosevelt's insistence, it would be funded by individual contributions from workers.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|pp=262–266}}

In January 1935, Roosevelt proposed the Social Security Act, which he presented as a more practical alternative to the Townsend Plan. After a series of congressional hearings, the Social Security Act became law in August 1935.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|pp=270–271}} During the congressional debate over Social Security, the program was expanded to provide payments to widows and dependents of Social Security recipients.{{sfn |McJimsey|2000|p=108}} Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers.<ref>Quadagno, Jill (1994). ''The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty''. New York: [[Oxford University Press]]. p. 7.</ref> As a result, <blockquote>65 percent of the African American workforce was excluded from the initial Social Security program (as well as 27 percent of white workers). Many of these workers were covered only later on, when Social Security was expanded in 1950 and then in 1954.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Plumer |first=Brad |title=A second look at Social Security's racist origins |language=en-US |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/03/a-second-look-at-social-securitys-racist-origins/ |access-date=2021-04-02|issn=0190-8286}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Katznelson |first=Ira |title=Fear itself: the New Deal and the origins of our time |date=2013 |isbn=978-0-87140-450-3 |edition=First |location=New York |oclc=783163618}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=2020-08-14|title=NAACP {{!}} Viewing Social Security Through The Civil Rights Lens|url=https://www.naacp.org/latest/viewing-social-security-civil-rights-lens/|access-date=2021-04-02|website=NAACP|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>The program was funded through a newly established payroll tax, which later became known as the [[Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax]]. Social Security taxes would be collected from employers by the states, with employers and employees contributing equally to the tax.{{sfn |McJimsey|2000|p=107}} Because the Social Security tax was [[regressive tax|regressive]], and Social Security benefits were based on how much each individual had paid into the system, the program would not contribute to income redistribution in the way that some reformers, including Perkins, had hoped.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|pp=267–269}} In addition to creating the program, the Social Security Act also established a state-administered unemployment insurance system and the [[Aid to Families with Dependent Children|Aid to Dependent Children]], which provided aid to families headed by single mothers.{{sfn|Kennedy|1999|pp=271–272}} Roosevelt believed that social security should cover everyone, stating that “I see no reason why every child, from the day he is born, shouldn’t be a member of the social security system. When he begins to grow up, he should know he will have old-age benefits direct from the insurance system to which he will belong all his life. If he is out of work, he gets a benefit. If he is sick or crippled, he gets a benefit….I don’t see why not. Cradle to the grave-from the cradle to the grave they ought to be in a social insurance system.”<ref>Retiring Men Manhood, Labor, and Growing Old in America, 1900-1960 By Gregory Wood, 2012, P.100</ref> Compared with the social security systems in Western Europe, the Social Security Act of 1935 was rather conservative. However, it was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for the economic security of the aged, the temporarily unemployed, dependent children, and the handicapped.<ref>{{cite book|author=Mary Beth Norton|title=A People and a Nation: A History of the United States. Since 1865|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=129rne8WpyoC&pg=PA670|year=2009|publisher=Cengage |page=670|isbn=978-0547175607|display-authors=etal}}</ref>