FDR: Da Bomb

FDR and Eleanor  listening in 1942

I'd just finished reading a profile of Rep. Paul Ryan in the August 6th issue of The New Yorker, when lo, and behold, Romney chose him as his running mate.  I was amazed.  Not too frightened, because I don't think they're going to win.

I hope.

The profile outlined the original Ryan budget plan: partially privatize Social Security,  end Medicare and replace it with a system  that  gives seniors a lump of money with which to buy private health insurance,and repeal the Affordable Care Act (how elderly sick people will be able to buy private health insurance beats the hell out of me).   End Medicaid, the federal health care program for the poor, and give block grants to the states, instead.   No cuts to the military. 

Reader, I took this personally. Privatize Social Security?  What about FDR, who launched Social Security in 1935?  My parents adored him.  Don't even think about criticizing the man who came to England's rescue during the war (my mother was British) and implemented the Depression-era programs that enabled my dad to work his way through college doing manual labor.  My dad also went to graduate school on the GI Bill and bought his house with a Veterans Administration loan.

In other words, he had government help.  He also worked hard, paid taxes, put two daughters through the University of California, and died solvent.  Jerry's dad, who deplored FDR, collected Social Security for decades (he was just shy of 100 when he died).  All our elderly family members were enrolled in Medicare, which was hitched to the Social Security Act under Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

More government help.

And now Paul Ryan comes along, son of a wealthy family but let's overlook that, who wants to unravel many of those programs.  He may be right that the federal deficit demands that entitlement programs be re-tooled, and he has removed some of the more controversial ideas from his original plan.  But implicit in his vision is the belief that they aren't really necessary.  Do away with Medicare, Medicaid, and part of Social Security,  and people will be fine if they just work hard enough.  And save money.

Saving is great, but it's hard to do when the US economy is riding on your shoulders and if you don't spend, we're all going to slide into the deep lake of recession and not everyone  knows how to swim and some find weights  tied to their feet.  Spend/save/spend/save--what do they want us to do?

There's hardly anyone left who remembers the days before Social Security, and if they do, it's when they were children and didn't need retirement income.  No one in their right mind who isn't an economist can truly want to undertake investing their last-chance, do-or-die safety net money for retirement on their own.  Who'd know what to do?  Who trusts the banks and investment firms that sell "retirement investment products?" 

Come back, FDR.  Return with your vision, your pragmatism, your empathy.  Bring Eleanor with you.  Send her out to talk to people in food pantry lines, mothers of Head Start kids, people running out of unemployment eligibility.  She was a great listener. You were a great implementer.  Under you, people actually had faith in the government.