As a former associate commissioner of the Social Security Administration and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandson, I have a great passion for protecting the most successful social program our nation has ever seen.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the day my grandfather signed the Social Security Act into law, ensuring that Americans retired with financial security. Since that time, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to protect and strengthen Social Security.
On this anniversary, we stand with the one in five seniors for whom Social Security is their only source of income, the 33 million retired workers and their dependents, the 7 million survivors of deceased workers, and the 8 million disabled workers and their families for whom Social Security has provided financial security.
On the anniversary of this historic legislation, let us celebrate the principle that America’s workers deserve a secure retirement. Americans deserve to look forward to a retirement of financial stability rather than relying on a system of risky private accounts that raid the Social Security trust fund. Unfortunately, many in Washington have forgotten these basic principles.
A reform package in 1983 – which increased taxes and gradually raised the retirement age to 67 to build up a reserve trust fund – has prepared it for the fiscal challenge of paying benefits to the baby-boom generation as they retire. But it faces a continued threat to solvency in later years.
Rather than proposing a solution to these challenges, many in Congress have proposed legislation that includes the creation of private accounts, which would cut Social Security benefits by as much as 40 percent, and borrow almost $5 trillion from foreign countries like China and Japan.
These private accounts do nothing to strengthen Social Security and do not prolong the life of the program by a single day. In fact, borrowing trillions of dollars to create these private accounts would actually weaken Social Security by impairing the government’s ability to redeem the U.S. Treasury bonds in the Social Security trust fund to pay Social Security benefits of the baby boomers.
It is time to address the long-term solvency of Social Security, but first, leaders in Congress must take every version of this privatization scheme off the table. Social Security can be strengthened for the long term with common-sense, bipartisan changes. That has worked before, and it will work again. But real bipartisan progress cannot happen until everyone agrees to focus on strengthening Social Security, instead of replacing it with a privatization scheme and penalizing the hard-working middle class with severe benefit cuts.
Together, as we have in the past, Democrats and Republicans can take the critical steps necessary to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security. We can accomplish this without cutting guaranteed benefits, because Americans deserve to receive what they have earned. And we can accomplish this without increasing the deficit.
We must direct our elected representatives to work hard to make this happen.
As we celebrate this anniversary, let us remember that the Social Security fight is hardly over; in fact, the real battle is yet to come. Many in Congress remain driven to privatize Social Security and cut middle-class benefits, and we must remain committed to protect and preserve Social Security for future generations.
James Roosevelt Jr. is a grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and is a former associate commissioner of the Social Security Administration.
