Most Americans would not know the name Robert M. Ball, but all owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Starting with Social Security just four years after its enactment, he spent the next seven decades improving and defending the most successful and popular program in the nation's history. Friday, a building on the Woodlawn campus of the Social Security Administration will be dedicated to him, just over three years after his death at age 93.
Mr. Ball was a giant. The longest-serving commissioner in the history of the program, he was instrumental in Congress' enactment of the Disability Insurance program, Medicare, and the automatic inflation protection that beneficiaries enjoy, among many other achievements. Moreover, historians credit him with helping to save Social Security at least four times. The first when he was in his 30s and the program was withering away, in danger of being replaced by welfare. The last when he was in his 90s, and he was Grand Central Station in the effort to derail President George W. Bush's plan to partially privatize the program.
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