d what new Morris 2changes might become law when reform does occur. Finally, the report will deliver an optimal legislative environment for the reconfiguration of what has been the most stable government program in America history.The History of Social SecurityDerived from Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck’s Prussian Plan for German workers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt developed a plan to provide pensions for elderly Americans in 1935. After nearly six years of depression, the United States was ravaged with an unemployment rate of 25% and many others had lost everything they owned due to the collapse of the internal banking market. The future looked grim for most Americans because even those with jobs had barely any purchasing power due to enormous interest rates and high inflation. Riding high on his New Deal, President Roosevelt studied how Bismarck’s plan had worked so well in Germany and sought to develop a similar plan for America citizens. On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt succeeded in developing a national insurance plan and signed the Social Security Act into law (Sharp: 389).The Social Security Act of 1935 was set up to pay monthly benefits to retired workers starting at the age of sixty-five. However, before the Act went into effect in 1939, two new categories of recipients expanded the law. Dependants of the retiree were given benefits when the retiree passed away. Second, family members of a covered worker would receive benefits if the worker died before the benefits were distributed. Morris 3These new provisions modified the original bill and made it more of a family benefit than an individual benefit (Sharp: 390).After minor changes throughout the fifties and early sixties, Social Security’s most recent changes occurred under President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Johnson established the Medicare program that provided health coverage to nearly ever American sixty-five or older, on top of thei...
