Whatever plans the Republican Party has to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it's hard to imagine they'll come up with a response as strong as this:
The 1936 story, told in detail in Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s, “The Age of Roosevelt,” began in October when a group of Detroit industrialists worked out an anti-Social Security campaign that the Republican National Committee quickly adopted. Two weeks before the election, signs began appearing in plants with the message, “You’re sentenced to a weekly pay reduction for all your working life. You’ll have to serve the sentence unless you help reverse it November 3.” On opening their pay envelopes workers were told, “Effective January, 1937, we are compelled by a Roosevelt ‘New Deal’ law to make a 1 percent deduction from your wages and turn it over to the government. . . . You might get this money back . . . but only if Congress decides to make the appropriation for this purpose. There is NO guarantee. Decide before November 3—-election day—-whether or not you wish to take these chances.”
Nothing was said about the employers’ contributions to Social Security or how the system would really work, but as the election grew nearer, Republicans were sure that they had an issue that would undermine labor’s support for Roosevelt. Republican candidate Alf Landon, who in September had declared that Social Security was “unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted, and wastefully financed,” upped the stakes still further by insisting the federal government had no way of keeping track of Social Security recipients. “Are their photographs going to be kept on file in a Washington office? Or are they going to have identification tags put around their necks?” he asked.
Of course, even that didn't work.