THE HISTORY OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT
            
             Donnisia Simmons
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
             Compensation and Benefit Management
             Professor Grant
             October 29, 2004
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
            
             Introduction
            
            
            
             Social Security Act aimed to alleviate the plight of Americans – the elderly, retired, dependent children, and the disabled. The Social Security Act offered workers 65 or older monthly stipends based on previous earnings, it also provided assistance to blind and handicapped Americans, and to dependent children. The act also established the nation's first federally sponsored system of unemployment insurance. Mandatory payroll deductions levied equally on employees and employers financed both the retirement system and the unemployment insurance (Social Security Reform).
             Despite its flaws, the Social Security Act of 1935 introduced a new era in American history. It committed the government to a social welfare role by providing for elderly, disabled, retired, dependent, and unemployed Americans. By doing so, the act greatly expanded the public's sense of entitlement, and provides the economic security that the American people desperately needed during the post – Depression era. In this paper I will discuss the development of the Social Security Act, the comprehensive laws and their amendments, and the benefits that the act established.
            
            
            
            
            
            
             In 1934 President Franklin Roosevelt created a Committee on Economic Security to draft a program of guaranteed social support for all U.S. citizens who were economically vulnerable during the Great Depression of the 1930s. That economic crisis overwhelmed traditional sources of aid for the jobless, aged, dependent children, retired, and the disabled. To help deal with the crisis, the Committee on Economic Security recommended that the federal government create a national program that would establish a system of unemployment and old-...