Social Security Turns 70 — Still Going Strong Despite Right Wing Attacks

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For seven decades, Social Security has been under attack by opponents who consider government-guaranteed pensions for Americans to receive as they get older or if they become disabled to be socialism and un-American. Social Security is one of the most successful and most popular government programs in American history. For more than 30 years, opponents of Social Security have peddled the lie that the Social Security Trust Fund is going bankrupt or is nearly insolvent. The roots of the efforts to attack Social Security run deep in the far right. They include CEOs such as Fred Koch, who promoted the John Birch Society’s red-scare-era smears that such New Deal reforms were “socialist” or “communist.” In the 1960s, Fred’s sons, Charles and David, inherited his fortune—and his ideas. Charles began funding think tanks to develop arguments for dismantling Social Security.
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For seven decades, Social Security has been under attack by opponents who consider government-guaranteed pensions for Americans to receive as they get older or if they become disabled to be socialism and un-American. Social Security is one of the most successful and most popular government programs in American history. For more than 30 years, opponents of Social Security have peddled the lie that the Social Security Trust Fund is going bankrupt or is nearly insolvent. The roots of the efforts to attack Social Security run deep in the far right. They include CEOs such as Fred Koch, who promoted the John Birch Society’s red-scare-era smears that such New Deal reforms were “socialist” or “communist.” In the 1960s, Fred’s sons, Charles and David, inherited his fortune—and his ideas. Charles began funding think tanks to develop arguments for dismantling Social Security.

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