The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) system, which we know as Social Security, was made law in 1935 during the first Roosevelt term.
At the beginning it was a modest tax-raising vehicle for the government, because it did generate tax revenue, and since the outflow of benefits was initially low (few beneficiaries), the federal budget benefited. Conservatives at the time largely resisted it, probably feeling that it was the proverbial “slippery slope.” Of course, that has turned out to be true, like any Ponzi scheme …
There was some backlash: political, of course, but also cultural. In 1939, a song came out that was a parody on the system. Named “Our Old Age Pension Check,” the song was performed by Roy Acuff (1903 – 1992, “The King of Country Music”). It was a spoof on the new law. It was popularized and probably used as comic relief in some of the Country and Western (C&W) performances of the era. I first heard it by collecting some Sons of the Pioneers1 (SoP) CDs in the early 2000s. I had remembered SoP music from my childhood, when cowboy movies were the rage (at least for boys in the post-WWII era), and cowboy singers were also popular.
The popular cowboy singer list certainly includes Gene Autry, who became very wealthy as a result of his initial career singing C&W tunes. But best for us kids was Roy Rogers, the “King of the Cowboys.” Born Leonard Slye in Ohio, in 1911, he joined singing groups doing C&W material. The group he is most associated with is SoP. During the 1940s and ‘50s tunes like “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds,” to name just two, became very popular.
Before SSI, I think it’s fair to say most Americans, and humans everywhere, lived their lives knowing that one of their responsibilities in life was to prepare for the non- or less-productive later years. The government pension would now relieve them of that responsibility. Today, SSI is now teetering on the brink of insolvency: “unintended consequences.”
I recall that at about age 19 in the early 1960s, I read Senator Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative, and it shaped my view of the controversy. As I can recall, Goldwater’s view – and he would have been a young man during the 1930s when SSI was installed – was that that use of government was beyond its proper role (mission creep?). Heretofore, charity had been mostly private (and of course, laudable).
The following link goes to a web site authored by a Social Security Administration historian: https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/social-security-the-roosevelt-administration/. From a government perspective, he covers the origins of SSI, etc., but he also does list some of the political “push-back.” But in the euphoria over the hopeful promise of the New Deal, the bill passed easily.
1 Which group still performs in Branson, MO, I think, and possibly other venues.