Brit Hume lies about FDR and
Social Security
Media Matters
February 16, 2005
James Roosevelt Jr: Hume's "outrageous distortion" of FDR
"calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a
resignation"
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and former Social Security
associate commissioner James Roosevelt Jr. examined how FOX News
Washington managing editor Brit Hume and other pundits distorted
a quote by Roosevelt Jr.'s grandfather, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, in order to claim that the former president would have
supported privatizing Social Security.
During their discussion, Olbermann referenced the distortions
by Hume, nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan
administration official William J. Bennett, and Wall Street
Journal columnist John Fund -- which Media Matters for America
has documented. Roosevelt Jr. echoed Air America Radio host Al
Franken's call for Hume to resign, saying that "he rearranged
those sentences in an outrageous distortion, one that really
calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a
resignation."
From the February 15 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith
Olbermann:
OLBERMANN: President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and, at minimum, midwife to the Social Security system,
would have endorsed President Bush's plan to partially privatize
it. Our third story on the Countdown -- that is the claim,
anyway, of at least three conservative commentators and several
Republican congressmen. But it turns out those guys pretty much
just made it up. In a moment, FDR's grandson, himself a former
associate commissioner for Social Security, joins us to discuss
the fraud.
First, the background. It began on
television with Brit Hume of FOX News, taking quotes from the
three principles of security for our old people that FDR
expressed to Congress on January 17, 1935. Not all the quotes,
mind you, just some of them, and out of context. I'm reading from
the transcript on the FOX website of Mr. Hume's newscast of
February 3rd. "It turns out," Hume said, "that FDR himself
planned to include private investment accounts in the Social
Security program when he proposed it. In a written statement to
Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plan
should include, 'Voluntary contributory annuities, by which
individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in
old age,' adding that government funding, 'ought to ultimately be
supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.'"
As promised, I'm joined now by James
Roosevelt Jr., now senior vice president of Tufts Health Plan,
formerly associate commissioner for Social Security, and, of
course, grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Great --
thanks for your time tonight, sir.
ROOSEVELT: Nice to be with you,
Keith.
OLBERMANN: The argument is that Mr.
Hume more or less twisted this entirely around. Can you explain
it in layman's terms?
ROOSEVELT: I think I can. And it's
really quite an amazing distortion. What they did was that they
took a very simple statement that my grandfather made, which said
that Social Security, when it was enacted almost 70 years ago,
ought to first of all have a part that took care of people who
didn't have time to build up a Social Security account. And the
government should fund that out of general revenues.
Secondly, Social Security should have
a self-sustaining portion that was funded by contributions from
both employers and employees. That's what we know and have known
for 70 successful years as Social Security.
And thirdly, those who wanted and who
needed to, as many -- almost everybody -- did, to have a higher
income and retirement, should have accounts where they could pay
in voluntarily, in addition to the guaranteed Social Security
benefit.
And then my grandfather said that
eventually, the self-sustaining portion of the guaranteed
insurance would phase out the government-paid portion. That's
because we would have a fully functioning Social Security system
as we do today.
What Brit Hume and others have done is
take portions of that paragraph and rearrange it so that it says
something entirely different from what he intended.
OLBERMANN: At the risk of doing a
little too much reading, just to put it on the historical record,
let me read the entire quote from which those quotes were pulled.
The ones Mr. Hume pulled, only that he wanted to pull:
"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 to
old build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that
for perhaps 30 years to come fund will have to be provided by the
states and the federal government to meet these pensions.
"Second, compulsory contributory
annuities which 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." That's one of the Hume quotes
there. "It is proposed that the federal government assume
one-half of the cost of the old pension plan, which ought
ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity
plans."
So, where he raised the prospect of
self-supporting annuity plans -- that was not to replace Social
Security, it was to replace the money the government was
contributing to Social Security for the people born in, say, 1870
and earlier. Is that about it?
ROOSEVELT: That is exactly it. And he
rearranged those sentences in an outrageous distortion, one that
really calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a
resignation.
OLBERMANN: He may have been the only
news reporter who did that. The other people who have made the
comment on it were people like William Bennett, also in one of
the live circus programs that they have over on FOX, and John
Fund from The Wall Street Journal online political commentary Web
site. Of course, the president referenced this vaguely in the
State of the Union. What do you make, generally speaking, of what
we might fairly call revisionist history?
ROOSEVELT: It is really quite amazing
that all of the folks supporting privatization, from the
president on down, keep invoking the name of my grandfather,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I think it's, in a way, it is
flattering to him. It's a testimony to how successful the program
that he put in place has been and continues to be. And there's --
on the screen you just saw my dad standing next to my
grandfather. There he is again.
OLBERMANN: But you are convinced from
all that you know, and if anyone actually literally took all of
the words of your grandfather and went through them with the
proverbial fine-tooth comb, they would have never found anything
in his mind, ultimate privatization, in whole or in part, of
Social Security.
ROOSEVELT: I'm definitely convinced of
that. And I'm convinced he never intended to phase it out. That
indeed is why some of the greatest supporters of Social Security
initially said it ought to be paid for out of general tax
revenues. And Secretary of the Treasury [Henry] Morgenthau [Jr.],
who headed the commission my grandfather appointed, said no, it
has to have a payroll tax that's dedicated to Social Security.
Because if it doesn't, it will either get to look like welfare,
or it will be traded off against other good things. And the
dedicated Social Security tax has been very successful over the
years in raising almost all of our elderly citizens out of
poverty, where half of them were in poverty before Social
Security.
OLBERMANN: Indeed. James Roosevelt
Jr., grandson of our 32nd president, former associate
commissioner on Social Security, our great thanks for your time
tonight, sir.
ROOSEVELT: Thank you.
— A.S.
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