Seniors aren’t to blame for U.S. debt

To Bill Hartman: I read your letter in the Herald (Nov. 8) and I think you better start checking things out on Social Security and Medicare before you start telling “Grandpa” to check out the national debt.

You must be too young to know that Social Security and Medicare were supposed to be funded by the people who had a nice large sum of money taken out of their paychecks — some for 47 years or more depending on how old they were when they started working. Most of these people you call “Grandpas” didn’t have the good fortune to have their parents take care of them or send them to colleges. The money taken out was supposed to be invested to make money and not used to balance the budget and get IOU’s in place of it. Because the government overspends all the time, the IOU’s are not worth anything!

Because we are a large group of seniors, if they had invested the monies for all those years there would be no problems. The government as usual doesn’t know how to handle other people’s money — just theirs. You can bet that’s why they are all so well-off.

So, all boneheads (your own word) need to check their facts before they start blaming the seniors for the big mess. The government has to learn to live on a budget, not just seniors. They need to stop paying government officials such large salaries too. They get raises when there’s such a big deficit and no one else does. You do your homework.

Liz Mueller

Hoffman Estates