[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 20 (Thursday, February 7, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E140-E141]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO ROBERT M. BALL

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 7, 2008

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Robert M. Ball, a 
great man who lived a life dedicated to serving the American people. 
Mr. Ball passed away last week at the age of 93, but we will forever be 
indebted to the legacy he leaves for us through his lifetime of 
commitment to the social insurance programs of Social Security and 
Medicare that allow us to provide for the elderly and people with 
disabilities and their families.
  Madam Speaker, I join my colleagues in extending my condolences to 
the Ball family, his wife Doris, his children Jonathan and Jacqueline, 
and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
  Born in Harlem and raised in Boston and New Jersey, Mr. Ball was the 
youngest in a family led by Methodist ministers who taught him the 
social gospel. He was educated at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, 
where he received a master's in labor economics. Even as a teenaged 
boy, Mr. Ball felt a calling to contribute to something greater than 
himself. As his biographer Professor Daniel Berkowitz wrote in Robert 
Ball and the Politics of Social Security, Mr. Ball indicated that he 
wanted to become a ``person of consequence.'' Considering his 
contributions to Social Security and Medicare, he certainly lived up to 
his hopes for himself.
  After taking a Federal civil service exam, Mr. Ball was called up to 
work for the newly forming Social Security Board as a field assistant 
in Newark, New Jersey in 1939. He joined Social Security and 
immediately understood that Social Security was a contract between 
generations that ensured that today's workers would provide for today's 
retired seniors so that they may avoid the indignities of abject 
poverty. He saw his job in support of this new social insurance program 
as part of something greater. Mr. Ball helped build Social Security 
from the ground up. As a field assistant in Newark, he was bringing 
workers into the program, spreading the news about the value of social 
insurance several years before the first benefit was even paid in 1942.
  His next position in the new Social Security headquarters in 
Baltimore allowed him to fully engage with his primary interests: the 
philosophy of the program, the legislative agenda, and where the whole 
program was going. Mr. Ball grew to know the program intimately. He 
developed a deep technical expertise in Social Security, and he also 
grew to know Congress and how it works. He was soon able to provide 
legislators with what they needed to govern and oversee the Social 
Security programs responsibly and effectively. Mr. Ball became so 
familiar with the work of the Committee on Ways and Means, that he was 
seen by Members as an extension of their congressional staff.
  Mr. Ball's career is intertwined with the history of Social Security 
and he played a key role in every major policy development. He was the 
architect of the 1950 amendments, which raised benefits and expanded 
coverage to more Americans. He helped implement the disability 
insurance program beginning in 1956. He orchestrated the developments 
that produced the 1972 amendments that linked benefits to inflation, 
ensuring that Social Security would never fail to meet basic needs.

  In what was seen as a natural assumption, he was appointed by 
President John F. Kennedy as Commissioner in 1962, a post in which he 
diligently served longer than anyone else prior or since. He is 
regarded by many as the father of Medicare, as he shepherded the 
Federal Government through the development and implementation of that 
program.
  In 1987, Yale School of Management Professor Ted Marmor, who began 
his career as an intern under Mr. Ball's superiors, wrote this 
description of Robert Ball. I think it captures

[[Page E141]]

the quiet and competent strength of the man quite well:

       Ball, six feet one inch, is a white-haired, broad-
     shouldered man whose gravity is lightened by a readily 
     available twinkle and chuckle. He wears black-rimmed, 
     prominent glasses that he takes on and off when shifting from 
     speaking to reading. His expression is frequently softened by 
     his easy smile and firm but unaggressive manner. At meetings 
     he leans forward intently in his seat and, with a formalism 
     that seems now a little old-fashioned, begins to speak in a 
     manner instilled by years of testifying before Congress: `Mr. 
     Chairman, let me begin by stating that I am in full agreement 
     with the general thrust of Mr. X's remarks. But I would like, 
     if I may, to bring up three somewhat technical points about 
     social security. . . .' Ball could have posed for pictures of 
     executive presence in Fortune during the 1950s and 1960s. But 
     in Bob Ball's case, the imagery captures much of the man, not 
     a myth. Ball did indeed come to stand for the SSA and its 
     reputation for honest, competent, reliable service to 
     Americans, who were regarded as clients, not supplicants.

  Even after retirement as Commissioner in 1973, Mr. Ball was often 
relied upon by policymakers and Presidents as a key advisor on Social 
Security and Medicare. An aide to President Jimmy Carter deemed him to 
be one of the ``high priests of Social Security.''
  When the financing arrangements for Social Security needed to be 
reformed, he was appointed by President Reagan to a commission to 
recommend a plan of action to ensure the program's long-term fiscal 
health. In that role, Mr. Ball unexpectedly salvaged negotiations that 
had been stymied by partisan bickering and produced the deal that saved 
Social Security in 1983.
  As the Founding Chair of the National Academy of Social Insurance, 
Mr. Ball helped create in 1986 what has grown to be an organization of 
over 800 policy experts dedicated to helping Americans better 
understand the role that social insurance programs play in our lives 
through research, leadership development programs, and forums for 
exchange of ideas for issues in the field.
  Well into his retirement, Mr. Ball continued to defend Social 
Security from ideological challenges such as efforts to privatize the 
system and undermine the very purpose of social insurance. Last fall, 
he reminded us in a piece in the New York Times that without Social 
Security as designed, 13 million more seniors, one million more 
children, and 55 percent of people with disabilities would live in 
poverty today.
  As a chief architect of the 1983 reforms, and someone who knew the 
program from the inside out, he also reminded us that the prescription 
for Social Security's long-term fiscal health should not result in 
further reductions in benefits, which are already declining in value 
primarily because of the increasing cost of health care and Medicare 
premiums. In that October piece in the New York Times, he wrote that 
``Social Security is the nation's most effective anti-poverty program. 
But it's much more than that. For every worker it provides a solid base 
on which to try to build an adequate level of retirement income. To 
weaken that foundation would he grossly irresponsible.''
  I will certainly heed his advice. Policymakers who ignore him do so 
at their own peril, because when it comes to Social Security, Robert 
Ball knew what he was talking about.

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