‘Emphatically and truly, a government of the people’

There was a fine opinion piece in the LA Times yesterday noting the anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act. The title was “President Barack Obama could learn from Franklin D. Roosevelt” and the author is Nancy J. Altman, who wrote the recently published history, The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble.

Altman compares the current health care debate with the fight over the Social Security Act and finds many similarities:

Then as now, opponents played the socialism card. In hearings before the Senate Finance Committee, a senator from Oklahoma accusingly asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, “Isn’t this socialism?” When Perkins emphatically answered no, the senator leaned forward and, with a conspiratorial whisper, pressed, “Isn’t this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?”

Altman says that the difference is that FDR controlled the debate:

In a series of fireside chats and other broadcasts, the president anticipated arguments and responded before public opposition got out of control. “A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing,” he said in one talk. “Sometimes they will call it ‘fascism,’ sometimes ‘communism,’ sometimes ‘regimentation,’ sometimes ’socialism.’ But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical. … I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing — a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals. … We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago, ‘emphatically and truly, a government of the people.’ “

You can read the entire piece here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-altman14-2009aug14,0,6660527.story.

Frances would say, “Seize the moment — before it passes”

Much has been made of economist Paul Romer’s statement, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Yes, Congress passed the Economic Recovery Act, and yes, it was huge. But unfortunately, much of that money is now going to shore up states’ income-starved budgets — instead of stimulating the economy in new ways. And another huge amount has gone to shore up financial institutions, without a penny of that trickling down to regular people.

We’re not done, yet. I hope no one thinks that we are. We have decades of painful diminution to make up if we expect the middle class to return to its previous robustness, and that’s going to take massive investment. Of tax dollars.

If we don’t do it now, it may never happen. There may never be another chance, and the United States will continue its downward slide.

President Franklin Roosevelt and his Labor secretary, Frances Perkins, had a vision of the kind of place we could be living in today, the sort of standard of living we could be enjoying. It’s embodied in their “Economic Bill of Rights.” Their initial work — including social security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage — was passed in 1935. But the rest of the list and most notably, national health care, was interrupted by the onslaught of World War II.

Yet, they never lost sight of those social justice goals.

January 11, 1944, FDR said this in an address:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

As World War II came to a close, FDR and Perkins knew it was time to again turn to their social justice agenda. Unfortunately, illness and death intervened. FDR died on April 12, 1945, before these goals could be enacted.

Frances Perkins, upon hearing of FDR's death on April 12, 1945. (Image: NARA photo, SSA website

Imagine what America would be like if these rights were recognized and supported. Sixty-five years after the “Economic Bill of Rights” was announced, we have the opportunity to make them real. But only if we move fast. Who knows what fate lies in store for us?

Perkins and Roosevelt built first line of defense against economic ruin

Kirstin Downey, author of The Woman Behind the New Deal, recently wrote an editorial in the AFL-CIO Now blog, “Frances Perkins Rides to the Rescue–Again.” Here’s an excerpt:

Americans’ fears about the economy worsened when the Department of Labor reported that unemployment had skyrocketed to 8.5 percent in March, the highest rate in 25 years.

These are not just statistics. The numbers represent real people. At 10 a.m. on a recent morning, more than 150 men stood alongside a main highway into Washington, D.C., in the Virginia city of Annandale, clustered in small groups, huddled against the wind, peering into the windows of passing cars, hoping for work. Motorists sped by quickly, looking away to avoid attracting attention and raising false hopes. Unemployed laborers are a frightening sight to those who are still working.

It is in alarming times like these that some of the key programs of the New Deal demonstrate their continuing significance and highlight how much Americans continue to rely on solutions fashioned then in response to lessons learned, in times that seem eerily similar to our own.

In this case, the economic shock absorber system is unemployment insurance. It is the FEMA of economic hurricanes, and it is keeping more than 6 million households afloat during these bad times.

The unemployment insurance system was propelled into existence by Frances Perkins, the canny but little-known social worker who was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of labor. She had studied the U.S. economy for 20 years before she took up her Cabinet post, and she was Roosevelt’s industrial commissioner from 1928 to 1932 while he was governor of New York. Together, they watched the Great Depression arrive and cast its shadow across the American landscape.

Frances Perkins is most famous today for her role as primary architect of Social Security. But in 1933 and 1934, the program she championed most fiercely was unemployment insurance. Now it has become a first line of defense against capitalism’s ruthless pattern of boom-and-bust cycles.

To read the entire blog post, go to http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/kirstin_downey.cfm.

“1934: A New Deal for Artists” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is currently (through January 3, 2010) showing a wonderful exhibit of examples from the Public Works of Art Program. Here’s information excerpted from the web site:

In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration created the Public Works of Art Program—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America’s spirit. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, were encouraged to depict “the American Scene.” The Public Works of Art Program not only paid artists to embellish public buildings, but also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism.

1934: A New Deal for Artists celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Program by drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s unparalleled collection of vibrant paintings created for the program. The 56 paintings in the exhibition are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. George Gurney, deputy chief curator, organized the exhibition with Ann Prentice Wagner, curatorial associate.

Publication
A catalogue, fully illustrated in color and co-published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and D Giles Ltd. in London, is forthcoming in July 2009. It will feature an essay by Roger Kennedy, historian and director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; individual entries for each artwork by Ann Prentice Wagner; and an introduction by the museum’s director Elizabeth Broun. The book will be available online and in the museum store for $49.95 (softcover $35).

Flickr Group
The museum is sharing nearly 400 artworks and related objects dated 1934 from its collection with the public by creating an image group on Flickr. Join the group and add your images from 1934!

On NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, reporter Elizabeth Blair did a story called ‘1934′: Reflecting On America’s First Big Art Buy. You can listen to the story on the web site, and see examples from the exhibit.

What did “socialism” (the WPA) do for us?

Salon.com has a slideshow illustrating some of the achievements of the New Deal. (Click the photo below to be taken to the slideshow.)

One of the slides showing WPA projects.

“Medicare for All” bill, HR 676, reintroduced

Rep. John Conyers reintroduced HR 676  on Monday, and the bill already has at least 33 co-sponsors, including Maine’s freshman Congresswoman, Chellie Pingree.* Known as the “United States National Health Care Act” or the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act” proposal, the new version has some significant improvements over its version in the 110th Congress, in which it had 93 co-sponsors.

In an excellent blog post at DailyKos, Action Time for Single Payer Healthcare, blogger SarahLee gives lots of information about the bill and urges support for it.

The California Nurses Association, which has been working hard on this topic, released a study last week showing the economic impact of the proposal.

Establishing a national single-payer style healthcare reform system would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs, and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues, with another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study released today.

The study, found here, refutes the commonly held belief that such a plan would be too expensive, particularly at this time of economic difficulty.

But, as Paul Krugman says in his Op Ed in yesterday’s New York Times, “Health Care Now,”

Paul Krugman (Fred R. Conrad/NY Times)

The whole world is in recession. But the United States is the only wealthy country in which the economic catastrophe will also be a health care catastrophe — in which millions of people will lose their health insurance along with their jobs, and therefore lose access to essential care.

Krugman examines potential reasons for the Obama administration holding off on introducing health care reform:

Finally — and this is, I suspect, the real reason for the administration’s health care silence — there’s the political argument that this is a bad time to be pushing fundamental health care reform, because the nation’s attention is focused on the economic crisis. But if history is any guide, this argument is precisely wrong.

Don’t take my word for it. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, has declared that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Indeed. F.D.R. was able to enact Social Security in part because the Great Depression highlighted the need for a stronger social safety net. And the current crisis presents a real opportunity to fix the gaping holes that remain in that safety net, especially with regard to health care.

Frances Perkins always looked on universal health care as the unfinished piece of her legacy. By the time FDR was ready to consider it, the industrial build up to World War II had begun, workers were in high demand, and employers began offering health insurance as a benefit to entice job applicants. The need seemed to have diminished, and Roosevelt knew he had a big fight on his hands over the coming war and didn’t want to expend political capital elsewhere.

Someone born that year is now well into retirement age and receiving social security. But for that person’s children and grandchildren, health insurance may still be out of reach.

*Full disclosure department: Chellie Pingree is my former boss and an advisor to the Frances Perkins Center.