Perkins: Hopes for wider security are bolstered by Dewey
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington – (Sept. 23)
Hopes for an early extension of the social security system were raised in Washington today through Governor Thomas E. Dewey’s endorsement, in a Los Angeles speech last night, of some important features of legislation stalled in Congress since its introduction in June 1943.
The Republican presidential nominee, it was noted here, came out in favor of certain major phases of the program which appeal to the largest number of citizens and which have encountered the least opposition.
On one controversial feature, which its foes call “socialized medicine,” he proposed a method intended to turn the opposition of powerful medical groups into cooperation.
Job for the states
He would legislate “assurance of medical service to those who need it, and who cannot otherwise obtain it,” but he would reach that objective by enlisting “the leadership and aid of the doctors of America in organizing our private and public hospitals as well as our other services into a fully effective system to protect the health of all our people.”
He would not follow the proposal of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bills in placing technical and professional administration under a federal bureau (the U.S. Public Health Service).
In another important particular, Governor Dewey differed from the philosophy of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bills, and did so in harmony with the declared Republican policy of maintaining and strengthening state functions rather than extending federal power. He would return to the states the control of employment services, and would leave unemployment insurance with the states.
Present law cited
In the long argument over the wisdom of encouraging the individual to look more and more to the federal government for his upkeep in times of unemployment and to depend on Washington to get him a job, the New York Governor takes the side of those who believe these are proper functions of the states.
But Governor Dewey expressed full support for the effort to add 20 million Americans to the 40 million now carrying federal social security cards which promise them old-age pensions after retirement at 65.
Under the present law, enacted in 1935, and for which the Roosevelt administration claimed full credit (although the Republican candidate pointed out it was passed “by a nonpartisan vote of overwhelming proportions”) the old-age survivors’ insurance plan covers business and industrial jobs.
Some excepted now
Congress excepted a number of other large classes of employment – including agricultural labor, domestic service, public employment, service for non-profit and government institutions, and self-employment.
For instance, a printer who works for a commercial publisher gets the benefit of the present law, but a printer for a religious organization does not. The law covers a janitor who sweeps out a grocery store, and a stenographer for an industrial concern, but not a janitor in an educational institution, nor a stenographer for a charitable group.
‘Not good enough’
These exceptions were made for various reasons, including the one stated by Governor Dewey, “difficulties of administration.” Governor Dewey said this was “not a good enough answer.”
Governor Dewey did not adopt all the ideas of the Social Security Board, nor of the framers of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bills, nor of the American Federation of Labor, which has been active on the subject. But his supporters think he may have found a way to end the stalemate in the Democrat-controlled Congressional committees (Ways and Means in the House, Finance in the Senate) where the proposed legislative extensions of social security have rested for 15 months without even a hearing.