Social Security 'crisis' is trumped up

To the editor:

For President Bush, ideology trumps everything.

Social Security is in no crisis and could be fixed with a couple of minor adjustments. One adjustment would increase the decades-old salary cap above which no further increase in payments is imposed. The other would increase current payments a minuscule amount. Neither is as dramatic or destructive as running up a multitrillion-dollar national debt by privatizing the system.

Once again, Bush has an ideology in search of a marketable justification, so the administration fabricates a crisis. As Americans struggle to develop a nest egg for retirement, the administration wants to force us to subsidize Wall Street and U.S. corporations. This would place everybody at the mercy of decisions by corporations such as Enron and MCI.

Iraq was the same. There was never a threat to the United States, so the administration trumped one up to convince Americans to support the war and to convince Americans to sacrifice U.S. and Iraqi lives for corporate profits.

It is also the same with the tax cuts. First the tax cut was driven by the "crisis" of a budget surplus, then it was driven by the Bush recession. The truth is neither. It is driven by an ideological commitment to transfer the tax burden from wealthy Americans to middle- and low-income Americans. Bush wants to shift his tax burden to us.

Americans are being used by these self-serving radically regressive politicians to enhance their wealth. Family and American values are nowhere to be seen.

ALAN JOURNET, Cape Girardeau