Arthur J. Altmeyer - Social Security

Social Security

In June, 1934, Altmeyer, acting upon instructions from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Secretary Perkins and Presidential Adviser Harry Hopkins, drafted for the president Executive Order 6757, which provided for creation of a Committee on Economic Security, the committee which oversaw drafting of the bill which became the Social Security Act of 1935. Perkins chaired the committee, and Altmeyer served as technical director. Other figures on the board included Hopkins, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., Attorney General Homer Cummings, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. The Committee selected as its Executive Director Edwin E. Witte of the Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin and an expert in labor legislation. In 1935, he became a member of the executive committee of the National Youth Administration.

Following passage of the Social Security Act, Altmeyer was appointed to the Social Security Board created by the act. Altmeyer, because of his background, education, and ability soon became the unacknowledged leader of the board. This was confirmed in 1937, when Roosevelt appointed Altmeyer as chairman of the board. Altmeyer hired Wilbur J. Cohen as an aide, and Frank Bane as first executive director of the Social Security Board.

Altmeyer was the principal advocate for changes to the Social Security Act in 1939. He advocated for broadening the program from a personal retirement program to a family social insurance program, one that protected family dependents in the cases of death or disability and to care for families with dependent children.

Even while emphasizing the efficient and non-partisan administration of the Social Security Administration, Altmeyer continued to speak out for policies that he believed in. This sentence from a speech in 1943 summarizes his view:

I believe that we should be thinking in terms of developing for this country a unified comprehensive system of contributory social insurance which would cover all of the major economic hazards to which the workers of this country are subjected, namely, old age, disability, death, and unemployment.