Social Security in 2010-Part 2
To The Editor:
The average American has been reading up on Social Security and I want to bring Part 2 up to date. I worked on my job driving the ice cream truck for 35 years and retired. Got my Social Security at 62 years old. I knew that the Republican party has been scheming to get rid of the retires safety net, the crown jewel of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s new deal. For 74 years social security has been keeping senior citizens out of poverty.
Now the same Republican who pushed for deregulation of banks are pushing for the privatization of social security, Medicare, the last hurrah of the new deal coalition and Roosevelt, the 32 President of the United States was loved by the people and the only president to hold a third and fourth term. Being the 2nd World War president when we fought the German and the Japs and he died in office in 1945.
Coming up, my mother told me not to vote for a Republican and when I asked why, she said they always vote against black people and poor people. Well I changed when Nelson Rockefeller spoke to me at an ice cream stop in downtown Manhattan, New York. When he came over and grabbed and shook my hand and said, Vote for me and things will get better for you.
Lyndon Johnson got Medicare passed in 1966 as an amendment to the Social Security Act. Republicans are reluctant to talk about their plans for fear of alienating elderly voters which calls for privatizing both popular entitlements. Pres. Obama named a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to study the federal deficit and make recommendations on how to deal with it. And despite the fact that social security is separately funded and the social security trust fund currently has 2.8 trillion surplus that is expected to grow to 3.3 trillion by 2022. It’s said the problem with social security is that it’s 2.8 trillion surplus was borrowed to pay for Bush’s wars and tax cuts for the rich in the past decade and the rich don’t want to pay the money back.
Now, the first step toward closing the federal deficit should be allow the Bush tax breaks to expire for everybody earning more than $250,000 a year. That would keep the taxbreaks for the middle class but generate $680 billion in revenue over the next decade. The conservatives won’t miss that little bit of money but it will help solve our national debt.
Average American,
John T. Nickoless
Bennettsville, SC
