editor’s note: Two recent columns by syndicated columnist Robert J. Samuelson in our Sunday Business section drew a sizable response from readers. One ran on Feb. 20 under a headline “AARP holds U.S. budget hostage.” The second ran March 6 under the headline “Yes, Social Security is welfare.” Here’s a sampling of the reader letters:
I may be naive and truly ignorant to the financial (perils) of the world, but I do know exactly how I feel about Social Security and its resources. I appreciate that Samuelson does not want to burden my generation with future debts. That’s nice, however I feel that if my SSI balance (approximately $25,000 at 28 years old) is going to go anywhere, let it go to me. I’d love it right about now considering my husband is unemployed, our house is in foreclosure and we have no savings to live off of.
In short, if we as an economically wiser society are going to spend SSI on anything could it be those who put it there in the first place?
Let’s not forget that a government’s solvency and backing is built solely on the backs and with the bucks of its citizens, and therefore if its representatives choose to allocate those dollars back to its people, then so be it!
Lastly, if you’re simply getting paid back your own money wouldn’t that qualify as a citizen’s attempt to welfare themselves not the government’s?
Caitlin Roberts, Denver
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In his Feb. 20 column, Robert J. Samuelson attributes mythic powers to AARP that are laughable, but our concern is his notion that older Americans don’t care about our nation’s fiscal problems. Our polls show they care deeply.
Social Security and Medicare keep millions out of poverty, enable them to see their doctors, pay for prescriptions and afford heating bills in the winter — in short, achieve a measure of security in retirement after contributing over their working lives. The benefits are not “middle class welfare” as the writer stated — they are earned “middle class lifelines.”
One out of three retiree households rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income. The average senior, with $18,000 in annual income, is just trying to make ends meet.
If AARP truly ruled, we would ensure this important debate focused on the health and economic security of average Americans, despite the demagoguery of those whose futures seem most secure.
W. Lee Hammond, AARP President
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Many are unaware that the FICA taxes collected are not saved as “funds in a lock box,” but have always been treated as part of the yearly federal tax income and expenditures.
The Social Security Act was passed in 1935; first taxes of 2 percent of wages were collected in 1937, and recipients were first paid in 1940. The initial act started paying recipients at age 65; but at that time the average life expectancy for a white male was 62.8 years and only the wage earner was entitled to receive benefits, so the program was cash flow positive at its onset.
A Supreme Court suit declared FICA taxes legal “because they went directly into the general fund like income tax without an earmark.” The collected FICA taxes have always been converted to U.S. Treasury bonds, which are then held in the Trust Fund. Today the federal government is insolvent since expenditures exceed total tax revenues, FICA taxes are less than paid benefits so money must be borrowed to redeem the bonds.
Social Security payments simply add to the increasing national debt. Since Social Security recipients today are paid from current worker FICA taxes, the ratio of citizens over 65 to workers paying FICA taxes is increasing, qualifying recipients are not just the paying workers, and the FICA program is in trouble.
Without doubt both taxpayers and retirees will bear the burden. For some citizens Social Security has become welfare, but to a 65-year-old retiree who has paid FICA taxes his entire life it is not. Mr. Samuelson is only partially correct.
Dr. Jay L. McGrew, Golden
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All our adult lives we have worked and this (Social Security) has been deducted from our earned pay. We had no control over what Congress did with the money when they raided those funds for other projects. If the government had held “all” those funds responsibly and they grew as they should have, we would not be in the position of current taxes paying for Social Security pensions. But this is earned income and is still reported on our taxes as income.
Barbara Rogers, Denver
