At Economy for All, Nancy Altman writes—The remarkable Mothers of Social Security:
This Mother’s Day, let’s celebrate the remarkable Mothers of Social Security. Without them, this essential program may never have been born. It certainly would be much less successful and effective.
The Mothers of Social Security pushed for an expansive, ambitious program. When necessary, they fiercely resisted men too cautious to embrace their bold vision. All of us benefit immensely from their work—particularly women, for whom Social Security’s modest benefits are especially important.
Best known of Social Security’s many mothers is Frances Perkins, the first female member of a presidential Cabinet in the history of the country. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt first asked Perkins to become Secretary of Labor, she told him that she would only accept his history-making offer if he agreed to fully support her fight for Social Security, as well as other significant measures to increase all of our economic security. He did. True to her principles and values, she was a driving force behind the healthy start of Social Security, from the system’s conception to its birth and its early growth.
“As good as Social Security is, it can and should be better. Past generations of women and men have fought to improve it. Now it is our turn.”
A less-known pathbreaker was Dr. Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, the first tenured female law professor in the country. A Ph.D. economist, she taught both law and economics at Berkeley and authored a landmark treatise, Insuring the Essentials, an exhaustive study of social insurance and minimum wage programs around the world.
Armstrong chaired the Roosevelt administration working group that invented Social Security. Other policymakers, concerned about the constitutionality of Social Security, argued that it should be a state-based program. Armstrong successfully convinced them that only a federal program was workable. When those who oversaw her work contemplated dropping Social Security because they feared it was too big a lift, she leaked their plan to friendly journalists whose exposés got Social Security back on track. [...]
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Long odds on passage, but Democrats reintroduce DREAM Act anyway:
Ten years after the DREAM Act was first introduced in Congress and five months after advocates failed to get it past a cloture vote to end debate in the Senate, Democrats are trying again to get this key legislation passed. But the obstacles seem even greater than they were last December.
The House, which passed the DREAM Act last year, is now firmly in conservative Republican hands. And the Senate, where a filibuster derailed an up-or-down vote, is not only less Democratic than it was in 2010, but also all five Democrats who voted against cloture are still in office. The hope, according to Majority Leader Harry Reid, is that compromises on immigration enforcement may get the bill passed this time by bringing around the Senate Democrats who poleaxed the proposal last year, plus a few Republicans. Two Republicans who voted for cloture last year, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, are still in the Senate.
The DREAM Act is a straightforward proposal for elementary justice. It would put undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children—before they were 16—on a path to citizenship as long as they have no criminal record and if they commit to serving two years in the military or getting a two- or four-year college degree. They must have lived in the country for at least five years and, in the version of the act proposed today, be 35 or younger. That would include a potential of about 1.2 million people, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 755,000 currently unauthorized immigrants might satisfy the DREAM Act's college or military service requirements and gain citizenship.