John,

We built our Social Security system at the depths of the Great Depression, as President Roosevelt said upon signing the Social Security Act 85 years ago:¹

It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

As we begin to recover from this COVID-induced depression we must remember that we built our Social Security system at one of the darkest times in American history.

If you can, please consider making a year-end donation to Social Security Works to protect our earned benefits and build on the system that FDR began!

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Times of great crisis must also be times of great ambition. Instead of propping up our broken corporate health care system, we should build a system based on Medicare for All.

Instead of cutting Social Security, we should expand it.

And instead of lavishing pharmaceutical corporations with billions in new profits, we should ensure that the COVID vaccine, which was over 99.9% funded with taxpayer dollars (the rest was funded by Dolly Parton), doesn’t just enrich a few Pharma CEOs who didn’t spend a dime.

As President-elect Biden says, we can build back better.

It’s easy to be discouraged after four years of Trump’s assault on our democracy. But the Great Depression was followed by the greatest period of prosperity our country has ever seen because instead of getting discouraged, we dared to dream bigger. Chip in $7 to dream bigger in 2021 and beyond.

Thanks,

Michael, Alex, Nancy, and the Social Security Works team