Another Letter That Won't Be Published

Did Robert Boyer (letters, Aug. 13) cite Social Security as a government program that has failed? I will admit there are many government programs that are little more than billion dollar boondoggles, the Star Wars missile fantasy comes to mind, but Social Security?

Here is a government program that has been operating successfully since in 1935. It has enabled most Americans to retire in their 60s, whereas before many people worked until the day they died. The biggest problem that Social Security is that it is so successful that Congress can’t resist borrowing its surpluses to pay for tax cuts and wars.

Projections show that Social Security will continue to take in more than it pays out for a couple of more decades. At that point, if Congress refuses to repay those IOUs to the American people, we may need to make adjustments to the program; the most obvious being to end the tax exemption for incomes over $106,800. There may indeed come a sad day when Social Security is “bankrupt” and this nation no longer has the resources to allow its senior citizens the honor of a few years without labor, but that day is a long way off.

Social Security is a shining example of what our government can achieve when we dedicate ourselves to the proposition that we are a society; when we acknowledge that we are all truly our grandmother’s keepers. We should hope that we can devise a health care system that works so well.