No crisis in Social Security, Medicare

Much has been written lately about the annual Social Security trustees report and their warning of an impending crisis in Social Security and Medicare.

When will America wake up to the fact there is no Social Security or Medicare crisis?

Sure the expenditures for both of these programs are slowly going to exceed the taxes being levied on their behalf, but these taxes were never designed to fully pay for these programs over the long term.

For many years, the taxes exceeded the expenditures and the surpluses were simply spent as part of the General Fund.

Eventually, when there is an excess of expenditures over taxes, that excess will simply have to come out of the General Fund.

In simple terms, these programs are on a pay-as-you-go basis.

The so-called trust funds are simply products of an accounting game. They were created to keep track of the excess of taxes over expenditures, but the funds were never really invested in actual securities.

The funds were loaned to the General Fund and are represented by fancy IOUs issued by the General Fund.

The actual money has already been spent. The trust funds have no real assets -- just meaningless and worthless IOUs. It is irrelevant to any discussion about this matter to say that the "trust funds" will someday run out of money because there is no money now for them to run out of.

Most of our senior elected officials know all of this, but keep up the charade for political purposes and to support probable future tax increases. Why the media goes along with this game is hard to understand.

Roland G. Ley

Arlington Heights