Letter: Congress won’t do right thing

Monday, Nov. 2, 1998 | 10:27 a.m.

1. Congress panicked in its mad frenzy to pass a budget before the government is closed down again.

2. Social Security Commissioner Kenneth S. Apfel announces a minuscule increase in the Social Security checks due in January 1999.

3. The government's scare tactics of Social Security going broke continues for the umpteenth time.

There is a simple solution to the Social Security fiasco.

The government has borrowed billions of dollars from the Social Security fund -- money that has never been repaid. Social Security money is not a slush fund for the government. It is the lifeblood of the 44 million recipients.

The solution is obvious.

Why doesn't the government do the right thing, repay the Social Security fund? Repay all those IOUs getting dusty in the fund and restore solvency to the entire system.

Too simple to comprehend? One more thought.

With the magnanimous increase of $10 monthly in the average Social Security checks for the 44 million recipients, do you think that Congress would dare vote themselves another $3,000 cost-of-living raise as they did in 1997?

We shall see.

Dorothy Norman Cooke