Letter to the editor: Save Social Security and Medicare

Regarding the letter “Social Security mess” (March 6, TribLIVE): First of all, Social Security was intended to be a supplement to a worker’s pension and savings. Since then, corporations have all but eliminated defined pensions. Now, citizens, without government pensions, struggle to make ends meet.

The letter-writer is happy to collect her Social Security along with her husband. Everyone has a great plan to fix Social Security as long as it doesn’t affect them.

To make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, legislators could raise the tax rate from 6.2% to 8.1%. According to current actuarial projections, this would fix the problem until 2095. Also, Social Security has nothing to do with federal debt; it is a “contributory system in which workers would provide for their own economic future” (FDR, 1935).

“The highest priority of my administration is restoring the integrity of the Social Security system,” President Ronald Reagan said in 1981. This should be every congressman’s highest priority. Some in Congress want to default on our national debt rather than save Social Security and Medicare.

In 2022, Social Security lifted 16.1 million older adults above the poverty line. Do we really want to live in a country that allows its senior citizens to live in abject poverty while some live in $300 million homes and have two yachts?

Vote to save Social Security and Medicare: Vote for politicians who want to save Social Security and Medicare.

Jim Hill

Lower Burrell