The first recipient of a Social Security check was Ernest Ackerman, according to the Social Security Administration's Web site. He retired one day after the program began, paying a nickel into the program. Ackerman received a 17-cent Social Security lump-sum payment.

Later, the program changed to begin providing monthly payments. The first monthly check was given to Ida May Fuller. It was for $22.54.

For Rampton, Social Security checks are a "significant" part of his monthly budget. "I can certainly live without it," he said in a Deseret Morning News interview. "But it raises my standard of living substantially."

Said President Roosevelt, in a radio address on Social Security's third anniversary: "The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need."

He continued: "We have come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. There is still today a frontier that remains unconquered — an America unclaimed. This is the great, the nationwide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier — the America — we have set ourselves to reclaim."

President Bush's proposals for Social Security's include trimming future benefits for high- and middle-income earners. His ideas have yet to get traction.

And he and House Republicans have yet to build a groundswell for shifting a portion of Social Security payroll taxes to individual accounts for younger workers. Whatever returns these investment accounts earn would supplement future benefits.

For more information on the history of Social Security, log on to: www.socialsecurity.gov/history. Answers to general questions about Social Security's future can be found at: www.socialsecurity.gov/qa.htm.

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Contributing: Associated Press

E-mail: nwarburton@desnews.com