I Did Not Know That

FDR is my favorite mythical historical figure to disparage - in large part for his creation of the welfare state as we know it - a HUGE component of which is social security. But apparently, as Duane Freese at Tech Central Station lets us know, even HE saw the need to have an ownership component in the program:

Franklin Roosevelt, the same man whom Bush quoted as saying that "each age is a dream that is dying, or one coming to birth"; the same man who gave birth to Social Security in the midst of recession; also said, in his Message to Congress on Social Security on Jan. 17, 1935:

"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, noncontributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities that in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Those are the same principles Bush is upholding today, and those Democrats who booed Bush derided them with the same exhalation of breath.