LA Times Editorial (Modified)

Some of the language and phrasing in this document has been modified from the original.

Head Note: On August 16, 1935, the Los Angeles Times published this editorial statement about the flaws in the Social Security Act.

"Social Security"

With the intents of the so-called Social Security Act, an omnibus or shotgun measure which the President signed Wednesday, there can be no argument. Everybody wants to see the old and sick properly cared for, everybody sympathizes with the man out of work through no fault of his own. Hardly anybody opposes aid to dependent children, child health, aid to the blind, vocational education.

That the social security bill solves any of these problems is, however, extremely unlikely. That it imposes new, large burdens on industry and the general taxpayer, when to do so slows recovery, is certain.

The bill is so large, so involved and complicated, and so all-containing, that discussion of it is difficult and conclusions reached must be uncertain. Parts of it may not even be constitutional.

What is to be done with the taxes collected does not seem to have had sufficient study. The whole subject should be saved for the next Congress for further study. There should have been at least three, probably five or six, separate bills, instead of lumping the whole subject into one bill so complicated that the public could not possibly comprehend it. Done as it has been, this bill probably resembles a proper and wise measure about as a statue by the village stonecutter resembles one by Michelangelo.

Source: August 16, 1935, excerpt from a Los Angeles Times editorial, Los Angeles, California.