Letter: Not paying IOUs is pure thievery

Friday, Feb. 11, 2005 | 9:20 a.m.

Democrats are being accused of defending Social Security in order to steal from it to finance their special interests. Consider the following scenario:

There's a table with a dollar on it that was taken from the Social Security fund and replaced with an IOU. At one end of the table is a Democrat. At the other end is a Republican. The Democrat wants to give the dollar to a poor person to buy food. The Republican wishes to give the dollar to a sugar beet farmer so he won't grow a crop this season, which would affect the supply and demand aspect of the sugar industry.

Notice that neither one wants to return the dollar to the fund and reclaim the IOU.

This is not to argue how best to spend the dollar. This is to point out that, according to some, if the Democrat gets it, it is money stolen. Should the Republican prevail it will be largely ignored. Yet in the long run, the fund has an IOU that has no value until redeemed.

That is the problem with Social Security. It's loaded with IOUs, which will mature in the very near future. And the only way to redeem these IOUs is to raise taxes. President Bush is not trying to save Social Security. He is doing nothing more than setting the stage for the federal government to default on its debt to the fund.

Money borrowed from the Social Security fund has been used in the War on Poverty, for corporate welfare and to finance tax cuts. Should the federal government default on these loans, it will be money stolen. Both parties, Republican and Democrat, are culpable in this theft.

TERRY E PEELE