As Jane Galt observes, lefty "media watchdog" Media Matters is reporting that ". . . FOX News managing editor and anchor Brit Hume falsely claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts. In fact, while Roosevelt advocated 'voluntary contributory annuities' to supplement guaranteed Social Security benefits, he never proposed replacing those benefits with private accounts." [emphasis theirs]
Gotcha!
Well, not quite.
Here's the full quote from Hume (according to the Media Matters transcript):
In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
Now technically, Hume should run a clarification. Saying that FDR wanted to supplant "government funding" could reasonably be taken to mean that he wanted to phase out government funding for Social Security. But Media Matters should run its own clarification: Hume did not claim that FDR "advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts."
Hume's sin was taking the last part of the FDR quote out of context. FDR was not saying that all government funding for Social Security "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans." Indeed, that would not make sense, since by "self-supporting annuity plans" FDR meant "Social Security." Rather, FDR was talking about government funding for people too old at the time of Social Security's inception to make sufficient payments into the program. Under FDR's proposal, these geezers would receive outright payments from the government, and these payments that would be phased out over time as they died off and were replaced by retirees who had paid into the system. Hume glides over this distinction with the overly broad "government funding" formulation. Here is the full quote from FDR (hat tip: tech central station):
In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, noncontributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities that in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.
Again, FDR is not saying that private accounts should supplant the whole of Social Security, but rather that the limited, outright payments to geezers should eventually be supplanted by the "self-supporting system" of Social Security (his words, definitely not mine).
But word-parsing cuts both ways. If Hume's generality constitutes a "false claim," as Media Matters flatly asserts, then Media Matters' own accusation--that Hume claimed FDR "advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts"--is equally false by being too general. Hume merely said Roosevelt intended "that any Social Security plans should include" voluntary accounts--far short of "replacing Social Security with private accounts." Hume's main point is totally valid: FDR did indeed propose voluntary accounts as a component of Social Security. Just like Dub-yah.
UPDATE:
On re-reading the Media Matters story, it's clear that Bill Bennett misappropriated the FDR quote as a call for full privatization based on Hume's fudge. The merits of full privatization aside, Hume should definitely run a clarification tonight. We'll see what he does.
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