FDR Proposed Private Accounts

We didn't get them in 1935. It's not too late.

by Rod D. Martin
August 19, 2005

To hear today's Democrats talk, Franklin Roosevelt would be spinning in his grave if he heard today's debate about Social Security private accounts.

They're only half right. He'd be spinning if he heard today's Democrats.

Roosevelt was many things, but he was no fool, not on this point. The man who gave us the New Deal understood perfectly the limitations of Social Security. In honest moments, politicians correctly note that “Social Security was never meant to pay for 100% of your retirement.” And to pay for the part a government pension scheme couldn't, FDR had a very modern-sounding idea.

Announcing his plan on January 17, 1935, Social Security's founder said: “in the important field of security for old people, it seems necessary to adopt … voluntary contribution annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age.”

In other words, private accounts.

Seventy years later, Roosevelt's words ring truer than ever. Social …