[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 20 (Thursday, February 7, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S779-S780]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO ROBERT BALL

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, all of us who knew Robert Ball are 
saddened by his death last week. For many of us in Congress and for 
tens of millions of Americans in recent decades, Bob Ball was Mr. 
Social Security. He deserves immense credit not only for his 
indispensable leadership in making it the most successful and most 
beloved social program in the nation's history, but also for doing so 
much over the years to keep it that way when some in high places sought 
to undermine it.
  President Kennedy named Bob as Commissioner of Social Security in 
1962, the same year I came to the Senate, and I know my brother would 
regard him as one of his finest appointments. Bob's leadership was 
indispensable in maintaining the strength of Social Security in the 
1960s and dramatically expanding it to include Medicare and disability 
benefits. Countless times over the years, I have benefited from Bob's 
extraordinary wisdom, experience and friendship.
  Bob stepped down as Commissioner in 1973, but he never really 
retired. He was a key member of the Greenspan Commission on Social 
Security reform in the early 1980s, and in 1986 he founded the National 
Academy of Social Insurance, whose studies and publications have been 
an invaluable policy resource for all of us in Congress on Social 
Security, Medicare, and other important social programs such as 
workers' compensation and unemployment insurance. Through its awards 
and internships, the Academy has inspired many young people in 
government, the private sector and universities to devote themselves to 
these issues as he did.
  As recently as last fall, at the age of 93, Bob was sending out to 
his extensive mailing list his ideas for protecting and financing 
Social Security, backed up, as they always were, by sound cost 
estimates provided by loyal Social Security employees who are still 
deeply inspired by Bob.
  I will miss Bob very much, and I extend my deepest condolences to his 
wife Doris and all his children, grandchildren, and great-
grandchildren. Bob Ball was one of a kind. Few if any in the long 
history of our country have done so much for so many for so long.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that last Friday's obituary in 
the New York Times on Bob Ball be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2008]

           Robert M. Ball Is Dead at 93; Led Social Security

                           (By Dennis Hevesi)

       Robert M. Ball, the commissioner of Social Security in the 
     Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, an architect of 
     Medicare and an influential opponent of privatizing Social 
     Security, died Wednesday at his home in Bowie, Md. He was 93.
       The cause was congestive heart failure, his son, Jonathan, 
     said.
       ``Bob Ball left an indelible mark on the Social Security 
     program and the agency in that he played a critical role in 
     the establishment of Medicare,'' the current commissioner, 
     Michael J. Astrue, said Wednesday in a statement. ``His 
     commitment to Social Security was unequaled.''
       Mr. Ball was commissioner from 1962 to 1973, but his 
     advocacy for preserving the program went well beyond his 
     retirement from public service.
       In 1981, he represented the speaker of the House, Thomas P. 
     O'Neill Jr., Democrat of Massachusetts, on the National 
     Commission on Social Security Reform.
       Called the Greenspan Commission, for its chairman, Alan 
     Greenspan, who later became chairman of the Federal Reserve, 
     it was created by President Ronald Reagan at a time when 
     Social Security faced financial problems. High inflation and 
     high unemployment were significantly decreasing revenues.
       Mr. Reagan wanted a report by the end of 1982, but the 
     commission was deadlocked along partisan lines. Behind the 
     scenes, Mr. Ball negotiated with James A. Baker III, Mr. 
     Reagan's chief of staff, and Richard G. Darman, a deputy 
     Treasury secretary.
       Weeks before the deadline, they came up with a compromise, 
     a complex balance of tax increases and benefit cuts that was 
     acceptable to the president and to Mr. O'Neill. Those 1983 
     amendments remain the most recent substantial changes to the 
     system.
       In 1996, Mr. Ball was a member of a Social Security 
     advisory council that was considering partial privatization 
     of the system, a precursor to the broader plan that President 
     Bush would propose eight years later. The council chairman, 
     Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve board member, 
     favored the plan. But Mr. Ball managed to place so many 
     other issues before the council that privatization was 
     kept off the table.
       Still, privatization became a centerpiece of Mr. Bush's re-
     election campaign in 2004. The president wanted to allow 
     workers to divert part of their Social Security payroll taxes 
     into private accounts. Opponents, including Mr. Ball, said 
     the Plan would leave the system under-financed.
       ``Bob Ball essentially set up a war room in his living 
     room; a phone, a fax machine and his big Rolodex,'' Thomas N. 
     Bethell, the editor of Mr. Ball's 2000 book, ``Insuring the 
     Essentials: Bob Ball on Social Security'' (Century Foundation 
     Press), said on Thursday. ``He wrote position papers, 
     broadsides and papered Capitol Hill with them.''

[[Page S780]]

       Mr. Ball said the system was not facing financial disaster, 
     as the president contended, and could be strengthened by, 
     among other measures, raising the level of wages that could 
     be taxed for Social Security, which is currently capped at 
     $102,000. With Democrats in the majority since the elections 
     of 2006, Congress has not addressed privatization.
       Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the 
     Congressional Budget Office, said Mr. Ball's influence was 
     potent. ``For years he has been one of the strongest 
     defenders of the existing structure,'' Mr. Reischauer said 
     Thursday. ``He provided the intellectual firepower to those 
     who want to preserve it.''
       Robert Myers Ball was born in Manhattan on March 28, 1914, 
     the son of Archey and Laura Crump Ball. His father was a 
     Methodist minister. Mr. Ball graduated from Wesleyan 
     University with a degree in English in 1935, and a An 
     official for three presidents and an architect of Medicare. 
     year later earned a master's degree there in economics.
       Besides his son, Jonathan, of Cazenovia, N.Y., Mr. Ball is 
     survived by his wife of 71 years, the former Doris McCord; a 
     daughter, Jacqueline Ball Smith of Meredith, N.H.; three 
     grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
       Mr. Ball first worked as a Social Security field assistant 
     in New Jersey in 1939. In 1947 and 1948, he was staff 
     director of the Senate Finance Committee's advisory council 
     on Social Security, playing a crucial role in shaping 
     legislation that significantly expanded coverage and 
     benefits. in 1949, he rejoined the Social Security 
     Administration and began rising through the ranks. President 
     John F. Kennedy appointed him commissioner in 1962.
       As commissioner, he played significant roles in creating 
     and winning enactment of Medicare, which provides health 
     insurance to people 65 and over, and the Social Security 
     disability program.
       Recently, Mr. Ball had called on all presidential 
     candidates to vow not to cut Social Security benefits. Last 
     October, in an op-ed article in The Washington Post, he 
     wrote: ``Social Security is the nation's most effective 
     antipoverty 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 be grossly irresponsible.''

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