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December 3, 2009

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Letter: Congress to blame for raiding trust funds

Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007 | 7:29 a.m.

There is nothing more tedious than having an ideologue with limited command of the facts ask others to look up an irrelevant fact to support his thesis. In a Monday letter to the Las Vegas Sun, James J. Poupard spent the bulk of his missive on a hyperbolic rant attributing all the ills of our health care system to the "right wing."

He concluded with a strong inference that the government raids on the Social Security Trust Fund surpluses became a practice because of the president who was sworn in in January 1969. He then cleverly suggests that if we don't know who that was we should check our history books.

Mr. Poupard and I would probably agree that government raiding of these funds is inexcusable and will undoubtedly cause great harm. Mr. Poupard, however, shows a complete misunderstanding of how our government works when he infers the blame for this raid belongs to President Nixon.

No president, left or right wing, Republican or Democrat, has the authority to raid these trust funds. In our system of government, the "power of the purse" is controlled by Congress. And who controlled the 91st Congress? If you don't remember Mr. Poupard, check your history book.

John B. Alvord, Las Vegas

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