Bringing the Constituents Back In: The Politics of Social Security in the 1950s

This article argues that scholars’ current understanding of Social Security policy making in the 1950s is missing a crucial component: massive letter-writing campaigns by ordinary Americans. Americans’ letters to Congress—and the responses of members and their aides in public debates and constituent correspondence—reflect a more vibrant, more democratic, and messier policy-making process than scholars have previously recognized. In the 1950s, Congress voted to amend the Social Security Act of 1935 repeatedly, expanding both the number of occupations covered by the Old Age and Survivors Insurance program and the level of benefits individuals received. Scholars have depicted this expansion as the work of planners within the Social Security bureaucracy. Yet, the letters in congressional records reveal that the process of amending Social Security resulted from—and helped create—constituencies of Americans who felt entitled to make claims on the federal state apparatus.