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Harold Pollack: Hi. Welcome to another edition of Curbside Consult. I'm Harold Pollack. I'm
delighted to have Michael Hiltzik here with me today who's the Los Angeles Times columnist
and blogger. Also covers business among other things and is also the author of The New Deal:
A Modern History, now out in paperback. Thanks so much for being with me today.
Michael Hiltzik: It's my pleasure. As I imagine, it's a particular pleasure to be on with the
inventor of the three by five card that tells you everything you need to know about personal
finance and as someone who has covered personal finance, I found it very refreshing and bracing
to have it boiled down like that.
Harold Pollack: Thank you. Yeah, I'm destined to be known for that even though it took me
90 seconds to write it down and I'm sure that ...
Michael Hiltzik: It tells you a lot about personal finance.
Harold Pollack: Yeah, I must say that if you actually ... it's sort of like hitting the
ball low in tennis. If you actually do it, it's great but it's hard to do. Like saving
20% of your income at least at a life stage where that's feasible is hard to do but it
will change your life if you do it.
Michael Hiltzik: That's true.
Harold Pollack: So why don't we start ... actually Obamacare is often compared with The Great
Society and The New Deal. Maybe we should start by you just mentioning your book because
I take it that that kind of provides a context through which you see some of these issues.
Michael Hiltzik: Yeah, that's true. In fact anyone who has studied the 30s, in particular
The Great Depression and The New Deal can't help but be struck by the parallels that we've
seen this time around ... not only in the causes and the sequelae of the crash of 2008
but the response and the political forums to the remedies that have come along ... and
in fact the remedies themselves have ... I found out when I was researching a book which
I started probably in 2007 or 2008, these similarities really were right in front of
me all the way.
Now I got into The New Deal in part because I was interested in Social Security. I had
written a book about Social Security factoring the Bush privatization campaign and of course
Social Security really was essential to The New Deal and right there, you can see that
then when the government really upends the status quo with a program of far reaching
social insurance, you see a lot of things happening. It's not easy, it creates a lot
of anxiety in opposition. The roll-out isn't always very smooth but the justification for
it is very strong and these programs work.
Harold Pollack: A couple of interesting parallels. By the way, one thing I should mention is
Franklin Roosevelt never took on universal health coverage. That was a bridge too far
for him and when he ...
Michael Hiltzik: That's absolutely true. In fact when he was ... when he and Francis Perkins
and his other advisors were talking about the social insurance program, they actually
started not even with old age pensions, they started with unemployment insurance. That
was thought to be the really important part of the Social Security Act. Then because ... in
fact because of political pressures, things shifted and pensions were number one. Unemployment
insurance was number two. They're both in the Social Security Act and Roosevelt thought
that health care would come next or later but by the time he would have gotten around
it the nation was heading toward war and domestic policy. It was pretty much off the table so
he never did get around to it.
Harold Pollack: Yeah, which ... and maybe he was right to be wary about biting off too
much at the time. The New Deal is also filled with all sorts of compromises that Americans
don't remember today. The initial ... first of all there were the compromises with Southern
conservatives and segregationists required to pass a lot of these laws which led to some
rather tragic omissions but also just the fact that he put this basic structure in place,
that was the best he could do at the time and since then we've added to it in a variety
of ways. That is kind of a useful way to think about what's the long term view of Obamacare
and other social policy changes.
Michael Hiltzik: Right. It's very important to think of it that way. In fact, Southern
Democrats were the strongest opponents to a lot of the deal although I think everybody
fell into line at Social Security but when Social Security was passed ... of course it
was envisioned as a universal program ... a universal retirement program ... at the very
last minute, Robert Morgenthau of ... Henry ... excuse me, Henry Morgenthau who was Roosevelt's
then treasury secretary changed his mind and the program got ratcheted back really substantially
to save money so the domestic employees were taken out of Social Security ... farm employees
were taken out of it and these were the classes of people who were most needy and they were
not put back in until the Eisenhower administration.
We're now ... now in 2013 we're as close as we've ever been to Social Security being universal.
It was envisioned that way, it didn't end up being enacted that way. Just as the Affordable
Care Act is envisioned as universal but it will fall short by a fair margin in at least
its initial roll-out.
Harold Pollack: Yeah, if all goes well with the initial roll-out, we still will cover
about half of the uninsured by the time this is done. Now some of the people remaining
there ... what to do about unauthorized residents of the United States and there's also what
to do about people who know that they could sign up but who just haven't. A number of
dilemmas there.
By the way I should mention one thing about Social Security before we move on which is
that I'm very grateful to that program. I remember very well when my disabled brother-in-law
moved into our house and we had to move him from upstate New York to Illinois and so he
lost all of his Medicaid and everything that related to any kind of a state entitlement
and my mother-in-law's estate was ... we had to move him because my mother-in-law had died
and so there was a series of logistical complications and then that monthly Social Security check
and Medicare which just continued seamlessly were really a godsend and really made it possible
for us to take care of him at a difficult moment ...
and I think we ... I was brought up to believe we should support universal health care and
related programs because there are these people out there who need help and it's really a
way that we all protect each other. That's the fundamental purpose of social insurance
and many of us are beneficiaries of it without ever really having to stop and think about
it. Our children are protected if we die soon; if we die suddenly our children are protected
in a variety of ways. The Social Security system has our back without us even really
having to think about it.
Michael Hiltzik: That's right. That's one of the great things about Social Security.
In fact Social Security advocates say all the time that they really think there should
be ... the system should restore the annual statement which we used to get in the mail
every year, just so that people recognize what benefits they really are eligible for
at each stage of their life.