![]() Roosevelt backed additional landmark legislation to address other “unpalatable realities” laid bare by the Great Depression. Wagner of New York Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi and Representative David J. Doughton of North Carolina Senator Robert F. Interested spectators are (left to right): Rep. (Original Caption) President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill in the White. ![]() Indeed, in a reversal of the Great Depression, those monthly benefits, though modest, allowed seniors to help their adult children and grandchildren get through the hard economic times. During the Great Recession, Social Security’s earned benefits were paid on time and in full, never missing a payment. During the Great Depression, the hardest hit were the old. Its importance was demonstrated just a decade ago. It is a stabilizing cushion, ensuring that recessions don’t become new Great Depressions. As Roosevelt intended, Social Security provides basic economic security to working families in good and bad economic times. It was a strong and important cornerstone. His original goal was to enact universal guaranteed health insurance, but he settled on the legislation he could get, assuring himself and the nation that it would be “a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.” ![]() In one of his famous fireside chats, Roosevelt explained his vision of Social Security: Together we would “use the agencies of government to assist in the establishment of means to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life.” Between 19, poorhouse residents jumped by 75% - and the overwhelming majority of those “inmates,” as those residents were generally called, were old. These unemployed families were unable to take care of their young children, much less their aged parents. Their insecurity was hidden in the shadows prior to the Great Depression but came into stark view when their children, on whom they depended, found themselves unemployed. ![]()
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