OASIS January 1965
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Click for Table of Contents Click on a Topic Below EDITORIAL ITH this issue, the OASIS begins its sec- W ond decade of serving you who, in turn, serve the public. As we said in our January 1955 issue and will repeat: “This is your January. 1965 magazine. We hope you like it. .” Vol. 11 No. 1 We were a smaller “family” 10 years ago Contents Page with only about 15,000 employees instead of Reflections 30 Years Later___________ 3 the 35,000 we have today. We serviced 5*/z Welfare Administration____________ 8 million beneficiaries as compared to nearly 20 11 Calculated, Correct, Complete ___________ million now. Secretaries and Social Security________ 14 We’ve tried 25 Years of Monthly Benefits_______ 16 A lot has happened in 10 years. The Role of Redistribution______________ 19 to promptly and accurately report the many Telling Our Story at the World’s Fair__ 22 technological and administrative changes and show where you fit into the picture. Published once each month for the employees of the Social Security Administration, Department of Health, Education, In that first issue, we told you about the and Welfare, for administrative information only. It does new Division of Disability Operations and not altar or supersede Regulations, operating procedures, how the Division of Accounting Operations or manual instructions. was taking the 1954 amendments in stride. Robert M. Ball, Commissioner We discussed coverage of farm employees and noted ways the area offices (now payment centers) were improving beneficiary services. With each passing month, a wide variety of subjects became grist for our editorial mill: Conferences, training, organizational changes, program improvements, district office activi- Roy E. Touchet, Director ties, etc. We showed you how your fellow Division of Management employees do their jobs and pointed with pride Robert Teeters, Editor to outstanding accomplishments. Contributions and inquiries should be addressed to the Electronic data processing at Social Secu- Editor, Room 133, Social Security Building, Baltimore, Md. rity was an infant at the same time we were. 21235. Phone Windsor 4-5000. Ext. 2385. We’ve grown up together. Each stride for- ward in this important area is reported to you. In fact, any improvement in the way we serve COVER the public is worth noting. We’ve depended heavily upon all of you to Discussing records of the Committee on Economic Se- curity in National Archives stacks in Washington, D.C., supply us with material, whether it be a re- are, from left, Jerome Finster, Archivist in the Social tirement, an “Interview I’ll Never Forget,” and Economic Branch of the National Archives; Abe or a full-length article. All we can say is: Bortz, SSA Historian; and Wilbur Cohen, DHEW As- sistant Secretary for Legislation and author of article Keep contributing. The 35,000 of us want appearing on page 3. to share that item with you. 2 OASIS The Committee On Economic Security: Reflections 30 Years Later By Wilbur Cohen, Assistant Secretary for Legislation, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 0 N JUNE 29, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 6757 establish- ing the Committee on Economic Security. This Cab- inet Committee of five persons prepared the draft of the Economic Security bill which President Roosevelt recommended to the Congress in 1935 and which, after congressional consideration, became the Social Security Act of 1935. Now 30 years later, the brief work of the Committee seems all the more significant and monumental. Within 6 months, a major research effort was launched, Among the speakers at the National Conference on Economic basic policy issues discussed and decided, consultation Security, held in Washington, D.C., in November 1934 were: Prof. undertaken with key individuals and groups, a bill of Edwin Witte 11.1, Executive Director of the Committee on Economic Security; Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor and Committee Chair- 63 pages drafted, consisting of 9 titles and 7 different man; and Frank P. Graham, president of the University of North complex programs, and a major report of 74 printed Carolina and later U.S. Senator. pages drafted for the President and sent to the Con- gress-all by January 17, 1935. of the unique work of the Committee in his excellent Miss Frances Perkins, who as Secretary of Labor monograph, The Development of the Social Security was Chairman of the Committee, has touched briefly Act (University of Wisconsin Press, 1963). He also on the work of the Committee in her interesting recounted in detail the congressional consideration of account of The Roosevelt I Knew (Viking Press, the bill and included many unpublished aspects of its 1946). Miss Perkins commented in 1946 that the legislative history. Committee “turned out to be an admirable technique. Miss Perkins was the director-producer of the entire It eventually brought forth an administration program enterprise. Arthur J. Altmeyer, then the Second As- in which all aspects had been canvassed by men sistant Secretary of Labor, supplied the professional with different lines of responsibility and different and technical knowledge to organize and guide the approaches.” production. Professor Witte’s encyclopedic knowl- Miss Perkins recounted some of the background of edge and legislative drafting experience enabled him the Committee’s work in a speech she gave to a general to prepare, within the very short time available, the staff meeting of the Social Security Administration in reports and documents necessary to making the policy Baltimore on October 23, 1962. She reflected at that decisions. Together these three persons coordinated time that “As I look back on it, I think that we made the work of the Committee, participated in the major many mistakes, just as Witte thought, but still I see no policy decisions, and guided the bill successfully other way by which so much could have been done through the Congress. in so short a time.” The offices of the Committee were initially located Professor Edwin E. Witte, the Executive Director in the Walker-Johnson Building at 1734 G St. NW., of the Committee, wrote a detailed account in 1936 Continued on next page JANUARY 1965 3 Reflections . and Walton H. Hamilton the first Director of the Board’s Bureau of Research and Statistics (1936-38). From the staff, Merrill G. Murray became Assistant Continued from page 3 Director of the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and a member of the staff of the unemploy- Washington, D.C., in the same building with the Fed- ment insurance program. William R. Williamson was eral Emergency Relief Administration supervised by the first Actuary of the Social Security Board ( 1936- Harry Hopkins, and later were located in the old mu- 47) and Robert J. Myers came to the Social Security nicipal auditorium (now demolished) a few blocks Board in 1936 as an actuary and became the Chief away. Actuary in 1947. The Mr. Witte’s staff and budget were very small. I became Technical Adviser to the chairman of members of the staff and their reports are listed in the Board, later Director of the Bureau of Research Social Security in America: The Factual Background and Statistics (1936-56) and subsequently Assistant of the Social Security Act as Summarized from Staff Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (1961- Reports to the Committee on Economic Security (GPO present). Gladys R. Friedman Webbink, Olga S. 1937), pp. 521-530. Halsey, Harry J. Winslow and Constance A. Kiehel A major feature of the work of the Committee was became associated with the unemployment insurance the Advisory Committee of 23 members headed by activities of the program. John G. Winant, former Governor of New Hampshire, I. S. Falk came to the Board in 1936 and became who became the first Chairman of the Social Security Director of the Bureau of Research and Statistics Board (1935-36). Two other members of the Ad- until 1954. Ewan Clague became Director of the visory Committee came to have important policy roles Bureau of Research and Statistics and later Director in the administration of the program: Mary Dewson of the Bureau of Employment Security. became a member of the Board (1937-38), and Several others from the staff worked in the social Marion B. Folsom,l some 20 years later became Secre- insurance field: Marianne Sakmann, Meredith B. tary of Health, Education, and Welfare (1955-58). Givens, Irma Rittenhouse, Eveline M. Burns, G. Regi- Of the 21 members of the Technical Board, Arthur nald Crosby worked in the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance. J. Douglas Brown and Murray J. Altmeyer became a member and later, Chairman of W. Latimer continued to work in the social security the Social Security Board and subsequently the Com- field. Professor Brown has been a member of every missioner of Social Security (193533). Thomas H. Advisory Council on Social Security since the law was Eliot became General Counsel of the Board (1936-38) enacted. Alanson Willcox, with the General Counsel’s office of the Treasury who assisted in the drafting of the old-age benefits program, later became Assistant Gen- eral Counsel of the Board and General Counsel of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. CONGRESSIONAL CHANGES Congress made a number of important changes in the bill recommended by the Committee. The changes in the “Federal Old Age Benefits” provisions (as Title II of the Act was called in the 1935 law) were as follows : 1. The Economic Security bill paid old-age bene- fits based upon taxes paid. The Act paid benefits based upon wages paid to an individual. The bill President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into linked benefits to taxes paid but the Social Security law on August 17, 1935.