Deja Vu: A Look Back at Some of the Tirades Against Social Security and Medicare

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Barry Goldwater


Senator Barry Goldwater in 1958. (AP Photo/Henry Griffin)

A couple of years later, President Kennedy and then President Johnson took up the cause. But there were critics. In his presidential campaign against LBJ in 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz) quipped, “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink?”

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