1935 SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE PRESIDENT'S ECONOMIC SECURITY BILL
1935 SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE REPORT
|Shortly after the 74th Congress convened in January 1935, President Roosevelt sent his Social Security legislation to Capitol Hill. The Administration proposal was transmitted to the Congress on January 17, 1935 and it was introduced that same day in the Senate by Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) and in the House by Congressman Robert Doughton (D-NC) and David Lewis (D-MD). The bill was referred to the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee.
The Senate Finance Committee held hearings on the bill from January 22, 1935 through February 20, 1935. The bill was reported out by the Senate Finance Committee on May 13, 1935 and introduced in the Senate on June 12th. This is the Report of the Senate Finance Committee as its version of the legislation was passed in the Committee and sent to the full Senate.
The House version of the bill had already passed in the full House before the Finance Committee reported. Being a revenue bill, the legislation first had to pass the House before being voted on in the Senate. The Senate therefore begins with the House version of the bill as its starting point.
There are several key differences in the Senate bill from the version passed in the House:
1. A new title was added (title X) to provide Federal aid to the States for the blind.
2. A new title was added (title XI) to authorize the issue of voluntary Federal old-age annuity bonds by the Treasury. This measure was designed to enable persons not covered by the system of Federal old-age benefits to build up old-age annuities, and it was a provision in the Administration's legislative proposal which had been dropped during House consideration.
3. Title II was amended to make retirement from regular employment a condition for payment of old-age benefits. This "retirement test" was in the Administration's proposal but was deleted by the House.
4. The grants-in-aid to the States for aid to dependent children was placed under the Children's Bureau, instead of the Social Security Board. This was one of several jursidictional issues that would have to be resolved in the legislative process.
5. The Social Security Board was placed under the Department of Labor, instead of being created as an entirely independent agency. This was consistent with the position of the Administration and the Chairman of the Committee on Economic Security, France Perkins, who was, not coincidentally, the Secretary of Labor.
6. The requirement that State unemployment compensation funds shall be of the "pooled" type was deleted to permit States to enact whatever type of unemployment compensation law they desired.