Letters to the Editor - Feb. 10, 2010

Time for choices

It is said that Social Security and Medicare constitute the two largest obligations of the federal government.

Social Security is a government-mandated retirement annuity program that has been contributed to by citizen beneficiaries over the course of years for the purpose of having some level of income upon retirement. Medicare is a government-mandated old age health insurance program that the insured have contributed to prior to retirement and continue to pay into from Social Security proceeds after retirement. Payments to both of these programs were and are made to the respective trust funds. The trust funds by law are required to lend only to the government and are prevented from lending to other markets, one must assume, because the government as borrower constitutes the most secure investment.

It appears that today’s problem of inadequate current and future funding capacity comes from one of two sources. The first is that politically oriented irresponsible fiscal management has allowed the premiums required of the beneficiaries to be too low to provide the insured services and/or the interest rate paid by the government to the trust funds on monies borrowed was and is less than market rate. The second is the inability of the government to meet its obligations to the trust funds because of irresponsible management of the general revenue fund.

Politicians of both parties have imposed a 15 percent payroll tax on all employees and have required citizens to participate in the Social Security and Medicare programs. If the problem is too low premiums, raise the premiums. If the problem is that the government takes improper advantage of the trust fund assets and borrows at too low rates, raise the interest rates. If the problem is that the government, because of irresponsible management of the general revenue funds, is unable to keep its obligations to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds then the federal government must cut political “give away and redistribution of wealth” programs and properly fund the insurance and annuity programs that citizens have paid for.

Is the problem to be found in the Social Security and Medicare Trust funds and the citizens that contribute to them or in the irresponsible abuse of power by those who have been elected to serve?

Well, representatives and senators, which is it?

BOB DEWEY
Wintergreen