September 29, 1936: FDR warned Republicans would try to take away Social Security

How can this still be true, 79 years later to the day?

FDR warned us in 1936, that Republicans would try to gut federal programs that help people and make America great. It’s as if we have a haunting by Santayana‘s Ghost, on Social Security, unemployment insurance, job training, job creation and budget deficits:

Update: Shorter excerpt of speech, leaving out the parts I really wanted; the video originally featured is not available. Rats.

Our friend SBH pointed us to the text of the speech.  FDR addressed the New York State Democratic Convention, in Syracuse, on September 29, 1936  (Can you imagine — does any state have such thing still —  state party conventions so late in the year, today?).  He found it at UC-Santa Barbara‘s American Presidency Project website.  Here’s the text of the excerpt above, plus a little:

In New York and in Washington, Government which has rendered more than lip service to our Constitutional Democracy has done a work for the protection and preservation of our institutions that could not have been accomplished by repression and force.

Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, “Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them — we will do more of them, we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity—twelve long years of it.

Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: the Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job’s being done.

Read more at the American Presidency Project: Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address at the Democratic State Convention, Syracuse, N.Y. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15142&st=Roosevelt&st1#ixzz1T2VHx1tx

More:

• Are You Better Off: Obama vs. FDR (esquire.com)
• FDR Accepts The Nomination – 1932 Democratic Convention – Past Daily Reference Room (pastdaily.com)
• Celebrate Social Security “birthday,” August 14, 2012 at FDR Library (timpanogos.wordpress.com)

Social Security Poster: old man (Photo from the Social Security Board, via Wikipedia)

Yes, this is mostly an encore post. Fighting ignorance requires patience.