February 18, 2005
Actually...
Here's the straight dope on the much-ballyhooed accusation that Brit Hume misquoted FDR...
Posted by John Weidner at February 18, 2005 03:26 PMHave you actually read your own link? It attacks liberals and claims Brit Hume never misrepresented FDR, telling its readers to read the transcript....Except his link doesn't even go to a transcript, but to a brief FoxNews summary article, which proves nothing.
Then, he claims liberals are upset because Hume said "Senate Democrats gathered at the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial today to invoke the image of FDR in calling on President Bush to remove private accounts from his Social Security proposal. But it turns out that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it.", which he did. But that isn't what Hume is under attack for, and its mendacious to claim otherwise.
What Hume also said was:
"In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."", which clearly seems to say FDR wanted privatized accounts to eventually replace tradition SS as we now know it.
Except FDR never said any such thing. What he actually said was: "In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles:
First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions.
Second, compulsory contributory annuities which 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."
In other words, for those already retired there would be a gov't provided pension program, the cost of which would eventually be replaced with annuities, to be followed by the self-supporting system for future retirees (the SS system we know), and oh yeah, an add-on program to allow those with the wish and means to kick in additional savings for their retirement (something, FYI, Harry Reid, Bill Clinton, and several other Democrats have been suggesting since the early '90s, but opposed by the GOP).
So your source claims Hume never said or implied that FDR wanted to phase out SS for private annuities. But as the real transcript shows, Hume clearly did exactly that. But reading FDR's actualy words, instead of deliberately truncating and rearranging them, its clear FDR never meant any such thing. The private annuities were only a short term fix for already-retired seniors. And note - while FDR proposed an add-on voluntary program, he never pushed for it, never asked for it, so it clearly wasn't very important to him or his program.
