Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Correcting a wrong — now

Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001 | 9:11 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

IN 1999 I wrote a column that said our government is refusing to be fair with the notch babies, hoping they will all die off before they are paid what the Social Security system owes them.

Let me again explain who these Americans are and what we have done to them. This blatant discrimination suffered by millions of senior citizens has nothing to do with their race or religion. It's all based on the year of their birth and nothing else. For many of them, this amounts to more than $200 a month less in Social Security payments than people born only a year before them or in other cases after them. That's right, if you were born between 1917 and 1926 you are being shortchanged every time your monthly check is cashed. Our government, through acts of Congress in 1972 and 1977, has branded these people as "notch babies" and has failed to rectify inequities they suffer.

Sen. Harry Reid has picked up on this terribly unfair situation and has been struggling to get some help for the victims since 1991. Because of old age, their numbers have been dwindling, so he has presented bills to pay them $5,000 in four payments. Even this attempt was blocked last year by the past GOP-dominated Congress. So he's going back for another try this year. Because of a projected $5.6 trillion surplus the awards should be doubled to $10,000 and then followed by regular payments like other Social Security recipients.

The notch babies may now be fewer in number, but they aren't going away quietly. Their generation wasn't made up of quitters.

Sun reader D.J. Donahue writes, "I would like to ask you, a man who thinks, if you would like to take another shot at it before it is too late for all of us. Otherwise, as one good Irishman to another, can you furnish me our Heavenly address, for that is where it will have to be mailed."

Sun reader Fred J. Schrumm of Boulder City gives a history lesson when writing: "Let's go back in time about 60 years. A group of people, both men and women joined together putting on uniforms, working in factories, rationing themselves to the necessities of life to save the free world. Supplies kept flowing into their homes and into the war machine. It was a long, hard struggle but they won. Now another struggle is with them because years ago a formula was changed for this group in their Social Security so they are drawing less than those who came after them. Is this justice? The notch babies never gave up during those horrifying years and they should not give up now. By rights the formula should be more -- not less -- for these years. So join together again and write letters to your senator and do whatever is necessary to see that justice is done. You wo n many years ago for a better world in which to live and I am sure you will come out on top in this battle."

The National American Notch Association will be meeting at 10 a.m. Feb. 12 on the second floor of the Castaways hotel-casino. For the old-timers this hotel is better known as the Showboat hotel-casino. As reader Schrumm tells us, these hardy Americans have no intention of giving up.

Personally, all of us should be ashamed that this inequity has taken place and allowed to exist for a quarter of a century.