Sen. Chris Van Hollen has come up with a plan to save Social Security, and it involves reinvigorating some taxes, as usual (“Dedicating estate tax to Social Security is sound policy,” Aug. 16).
I am absolutely certain that should we harness the awesome repository of intellectual horsepower possessed of both houses of the Congress that more than one viable solution to the future funding of that program would evolve (“Why Van Hollen’s Social Security ‘fix’ won’t work,” Aug. 13). As to me, I am not an economist, nor am I a political representative, I am merely a concerned future beneficiary (or casualty) of their solution.
It would seem to me that at least equally important to finding the funding to prevent the bankruptcy of the plan is a plan to prevent the government from spending the money on some social engineering projects. Had the government placed Social Security funds in a “locked box” that was truly locked, that the program would be self sustaining. So we see two actual problems for the government. Number one, how will it confiscate enough money to provide Social Security to those who actually earned and paid into it, and the criminal immigrants who didn’t? Second problem, how to keep the government from appropriating the fund for other uses?
Admittedly, not being of the intellectual ability of the geniuses who constitute our government, I have one idea that I think just might work to solve the problems with Social Security. Pay attention here, because my solution is very complex indeed. put the Congress on it! Then get the heck out of the way, as they fix it, not for us, but for themselves! .
Bob Di Stefano, Abingdon
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