[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 74 (Friday, May 25, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E983-E984]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                            SOCIAL SECURITY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. EARL POMEROY

                            of north dakota

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, May 25, 2001

  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend to my colleagues a 
new book written by former Social Security Administration Commissioner 
Robert Ball.
  As we in Congress grapple with the future of Social Security, it 
makes sense to listen to the words of wisdom offered by someone who has 
spend a lifetime working with the program. Bob Ball began working in 
the Social Security Administration in 1939 and ran the program for more 
than 20 years. Clearly, Mr. Ball is one of the country's foremost 
experts on Social Security.
  A collection of Mr. Ball's essays, ``Insuring the Essentials: Bob 
Ball on Social Security'', has recently been published by the Century 
Foundation Press. These essays not only chronicle the history of the 
program, but frame past and current Social Security reform proposals in 
clear, concise terms. I encourage my colleagues in Congress, and all 
Americans interested in the subject of Social Security, to read this 
valuable book.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record a review of Mr. Ball's book, 
which appeared in the May 12 edition of National Journal.

               [From the National Journal, May 12, 2001]

                 It's Not Just a Pension Plan (Dammit!)

                          (By Robert Ourlian)

       You may have heard the one about Alf Landon's ill-fated 
     tirade during the 1936 presidential campaign and how it blew 
     up in his face like a prank cigar, leaving him wide-eyed and 
     blinking. This was the attack on the year-old Social Security 
     Act, which he denounced with every overreaching adjective it 
     was his misfortune to muster. ``It is a glaring example of 
     the bungling and waste that have characterized this 
     Administration's attempts to fulfill its benevolent 
     purposes,'' Landon said with Magoo-like chagrin. He called 
     the act ``unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully 
     financed,'' and ``a fraud on the working man.''
       Bob Ball includes a hearty mention of Landon's little game 
     of Republican roulette in his new book, Insuring the 
     Essentials: Bob Ball on Social Security. Ball is not unbiased 
     on this subject. He has spent a lifetime helping develop an 
     American form of social insurance and defending it against 
     people like Landon. Now 87, Ball began his work at the 
     federal Social Security Administration in 1939, and he ran 
     the program from 1952-73. He has served as a member of or 
     adviser to nearly all of the many, many, many advisory 
     councils on Social Security (the latest was appointed only 
     last week). He has written, testified, consulted, argued, 
     lectured, and exhorted so profusely that he probably deserves 
     the nickname suggested by his Century Foundation editor--Mr. 
     Social Security.
       Ball went so far as to make a pro-Al Gore political 
     advertisement last year, heaping scorn on George W. Bush's 
     plans for retirement accounts (Ball considered the ad muted; 
     Gore's people thought it was powerful). Ball counsels 
     Democrats and openly praises labor unions, his allies in many 
     Social Security battles. He expects no calls from the White 
     House these days.
       But even as a combatant, Ball engages, it must be said, 
     graciously. In this book, he deftly--almost slyly--appoints 
     out where the partisan fault lines are in the Social Security 
     debate, and who takes which side. For some in the debate, 
     this is good to know. In one essay, he mentions Landon and 
     other early Republican opponents, and in a later one, hints 
     that Eisenhower Republicans were self-destructively slow to 
     warm to Social Security. In other chapters, he 
     dispassionately discusses the proposals--mainly, though not 
     always, Republican ones, through the decades--to downsize, 
     privatize, outsource, and otherwise rip some of the system 
     from its federal moorings--a goal Ball plainly considers 
     undesirable.
       Still, Ball knows what we're dealing with here, and, so do 
     we: the deep-rooted struggle over government's role in 
     America. To his Republican, corporate, and conservative 
     adversaries, Ball is saying, in a polite and sometimes 
     roundabout way, ``Let's rumble.'' Ball obviously believes 
     government has a role in promoting such things as justice, 
     fairness, and equality while respecting individuality.
       In his preface, he quotes Abraham Lincoln on the 
     government's job to ``do for a community of people whatever 
     they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so 
     well for themselves.'' Ball includes his own 1986 address to 
     a conference on older people, challenging the rugged 
     Reaganism of that decade on the need for long-term care for 
     the elderly. ``This issue will be a good test,'' he says, 
     ``of whether Americans are really against the use of 
     government for social purposes . . . or whether they like 
     President Reagan more than they like his philosophy.''
       In a commencement address delivered at the University of 
     Maryland a year earlier, he lectures: ``Greed is not enough 
     if we are to address successfully the great challenges that 
     face the world. If each of us pursues a life dedicated to 
     getting the most we can for ourselves, it will not 
     automatically follow that the community will be better off. 
     There is a law of reciprocal obligation.''
       Now President Bush has created another Social Security 
     advisory council. So this meandering collection of essays, 
     articles, op-eds, and lectures written by Bob Ball over a 
     stretch of nearly 60 years is nothing if not timely. It takes 
     the reader on an interesting, if sometimes challenging, ride 
     through the development of American social insurance.

[[Page E984]]

       It's not a completely smooth ride. Some of Ball's favorite 
     pieces, such as a 1947 journal article, would be difficult 
     reading for those unfamiliar with the jargon of the social 
     science disciplines. Another, a 1942 guide on field 
     interviews, seems to be on the margins of any point the book 
     endeavors to make, and the same goes for a 1949 piece on 
     contribution rates and funding sources. While these older 
     chapters have been blessedly freshened with recent data, and 
     do give a sense of agency culture through the decades, some 
     seem of limited use today. Yet, I resisted the urge to jump 
     straight to the chapters addressing current concerns, and I 
     was glad to get the insights that were tucked away in many of 
     the others: the guiding principles of Social Security; the 
     ins and outs of 75-year forecasts; the ways private 
     investment can play a role; the true nature of the challenges 
     ahead.
       Granted, Bob Ball has cast his lot in the partisan game. 
     But he speaks loudly in the ongoing debate, and this book 
     will serve as his megaphone--whether he needs one or not.