Criticisms
"Isn't this socialism?" She said that it was not, but he continued, "Isn't this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?" - during a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee
One of the most major criticisms of the Social Security Act was a common one in the 1930s. Many feared that the program leaned heavily towards socialism and that the use of this program would only serve to "Sovietize" us as a nation. Our constant fear of the outside world following WW1 affected the acceptance of the bill heavily both in and outside of the federal government.
Abraham Epstein
A very outspoken critic of the Social Security Act was economist Abraham Epstein. He was born in Russia but migrated to America when he was 10. He held true in his beliefs that, "a social welfare program be state-funded, Epstein was at odds with President Roosevelt’s emerging". Once the bull was actually drafted, he vocally and outwardly voiced his arguments towards the bill. He disliked the idea of the bill being "funded by employer and employee contributions" rather than "from the general tax fund." The latter would have suited his ideas and preferences for the wealth distributions. In the New Deal law, it was written that the employees would pay for many of their benefits, whereas Epstein believed that the wealthy taxpayers should have been the ones to pay for these benefits. "Epstein also despised the bill for leaving unemployment compensation to the states and he disliked the reserve fund idea." He held fast to his critiques of the Social Security Act of 1935 for another five years, even going so far as to become a consulting economist to Congress on the matter. Interestingly enough, many of his ideas and decisions regarding the social welfare insurance were adopted when Congress went on to revise the Social Security Act in 1939 ("Abraham epstein," 2013).
Charles Hamilton Houston
Charles Houston was born in 1895 in Washington D.C. He was a famous lawyer, Dean of Howard Uni Law School, played a large role in the Brown vs. board of education hearing, and advocate for the NAACP. The only person to speak out against the exclusion provision was NAACP official Charles Houston. He pointed out the discrimination that the bill put of African Americans and fought against this exclusion heavily as part of an overall critique designed to persuade the Congress to drop the whole Social Security program entirely. He wanted a single, universal, federal welfare benefit rather than the suggested social insurance policy that was being introduced to the American public. "Houston conceded [a] point about administrative difficulty, telling the Finance Committee, 'No argument is necessary to demonstrate that the overhead of administering and really enforcing a pay roll tax on casual, domestic and agricultural workers would practically consume the tax itself.'" Houston did not offer a change in the policy of the program, rather he offered that it be dropped and forgotten completely because of its flaws. He moved for a full revoking of the bill (DeWitt, 2010).