Social Security Act of 1935

Social Security Act of 1935

Social Security Act of 1935 established old age insurance for much of the over 60 population. Half of the funds are provided by a payroll tax on workers and half is paid by employers. The act also provided federal unemployment insurance, welfare aid to low-income mothers (later amended to families), funding for individual state assistance to elderly individuals, and various other social insurance provisions.

Cry Wolf Quotes

The Social Security Bill will add 6 percent to the labor cost of doing business. No one with the slightest familiarity with economic principals can believe that the total cost of this will be born solely by employers; it must be shared by labor and consumers.

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Editorial, The New York Times.

Business and industry are already operating under heavy burdens: and that old –age insurance would cause more unemployment.

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Allen Treadway (R-Mass), the ranking minority member of the Ways and Means committee.

This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.

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Rep. James W. Wadsworth (R-NY)

If the provisions of the bill now pending should be adopted, the country should realize that within a decade there will be a tax burden amounting to as much as $1 billion.

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Chamber of Commerce statement.