In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was branded a "Communist" when he urged Congress to pass Social Security. Newspapers, radio commentators and some members of Congress denounced FDR as a dictator and Social Security as a Communist plot to destroy the Constitution. On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson made Medicare law by signing H.R. 6675; Republicans denounced Medicare was as a sinister government takeover of the nation's health care system. George H. W. Bush in his 1964 campaign for the U.S. Senate criticized Medicare as socialism. Socialism is a Republican scare tactic we have heard before.
