Our grandfathers helped FDR design Social Security. We can't allow it to be willfully destroyed now.

President Dwight Eisenhower once warned, if there was ever a political party that tried to destroy Social Security, “you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” And though there may be “occasional politicians” thinking that way, “their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Well.

That’s exactly what President Donald Trump and supporters like Sen. Joni Ernst plan to do. If re-elected, Trump says he wants to permanently terminate the key funding source for both Social Security and Medicare — the payroll tax — a trust fund funded equally by workers and employers.

This is not some minor political gaffe. It’s premeditated attempted murder — of programs that American workers love, on which they depend, and into which they dutifully pay each week. This is their retirement security, which they’ve earned, not some kind of socialist welfare “entitlements.”

Our grandfathers, both famous Iowans, played lead roles in helping Franklin D. Roosevelt design Social Security during the New Deal. Henry A. Wallace was FDR’s secretary of agriculture and later vice president, a product of Adair County and Iowa State College, who settled in Des Moines. Harry Hopkins was FDR’s closest adviser and later secretary of commerce, raised in Grinnell and a graduate of Grinnell College. Both served on the committee that labored mightily to create Social Security, chaired by Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, and the legislation they produced was unanimously supported by every senator and congressman from Iowa, Republican and Democrat.

Social Security has saved tens of millions from the poorhouse. We just celebrated its 85th birthday. It can easily be strengthened for the future by lifting the cap on what wealthy people pay into it.

Now, in the midst of an unprecedented economic and health crisis, our leaders must reject “stupid” attacks on the best thing the New Deal ever did for workers.

But this health crisis also shines a spotlight on the imperative of health coverage for all, especially for the elderly who are most susceptible to the coronavirus. The threats extend far beyond the repeal of the payroll tax, which, in addition to funding Social Security, provides more than a third of Medicare’s funding.

What’s at stake in this election in the complete destruction of the only universal health insurance program this country has ever known: the Affordable Care Act. If it disappears, as Trump and Ernst are trying repeatedly to do in the courts and Congress, here’s who suffers:

• 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions (plus all COVID-19 survivors, 8 million and constantly rising), including 1.3 million Iowans.
• 21 million Americans will lose insurance altogether, including 230,000 Iowans, insured through Medicaid expansion or the Obamacare marketplace.
• 171 million Americans will lose the ban on lifetime coverage caps, which protect against financial ruin for expensive illnesses.
• 60 million Medicare beneficiaries will face higher costs.
• Two million young adults will be thrown off their parents’ policies.

And the threat is imminent. Trump’s legal case to destroy the Affordable Care Act will be argued in the Supreme Court exactly one week after the election. Ernst supports this attack, and has personally voted many times in the Senate to repeal the ACA.

The stakes could not be higher.

History is guiding us. President Herbert Hoover’s hands-off deference to the corporate sector drove us into the ditch. The New Deal’s activist government lifted us out. Unemployment plummeted, financial markets were regulated to protect Americans’ savings, and a stable floor was placed under workers’ economic security, through Social Security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, and protections for labor unions to bargain collectively for workers.

Trump’s plot to murder Social Security and Medicare is an alarm call. The systems that have protected and served ordinary Americans for nine decades are under unprecedented attack. Congressional Republicans are too cowed to resist. Warning signs are flashing red.

The chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, Stephen Goss, wrote to Congress recently, saying that Trump’s plan would completely destroy Social Security disability insurance in less than a year, and the entire system in another two years.

This murder plot requires our urgent attention. This election season, we must vote against this assault on the retirement security of every single American worker. And we must demand a return to a government that works for everyday working people — through infrastructure-building jobs programs, recommitting to climate goals that will rein in freak flooding and drought, regulating reckless corporate pollution of our clean air and water, stopping trade wars that decimate commodity prices, and making corporations and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.

To do otherwise would be pretty stupid.

Henry Scott Wallace is an attorney and head of the foundation Wallace Global Fund. June Hopkins is a retired history professor and author.