Recently, White House sources revealed their plan to cut promised benefits to retirees by nearly a third. And these cuts are guaranteed – whether you opt into the Bush plan or not.

For those entering the workforce today, that means more than a 25-percent cut in the retirement benefits they’re counting on; for their children, it guarantees a 46-percent cut.

Some of us who have pensions wouldn’t mind a cut in our Social Security benefits when the time comes so that people who don’t have pensions can survive. I know that AARP doesn’t propose this, but AARP doesn’t speak for all of its members.

The problem is that Social Security is a small part of the problem, Medicare is the big issue. The prescription drug benefit isn’t funded, which only adds to the existing Medicare problem. Clearly there’s a huge problem. But before we look at some easy fix, we’d better make sure the fix matches the problem.

Many of the government safety nets were put in place following the depression of the ’30s. Before we throw out those safety nets, we’d better take a good look at what will happen should we go through another hit to the economy like we had then.

Sadly, we can’t spend money on programs (wars, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) without the revenues to fund them. We’ve gone from surpluses to huge deficits in four years. And constantly borrowing just doesn’t cut it. Right now, China is funding the war in Iraq because we are borrowing huge amounts of money from them every year.

I wonder what will happen to the world economy if our creditors find themselves in a position where they must have more than just the interest on their loans to us repaid?

Cindy Andre

North Bend

Editor’s Note: Portions of the above letter have been found in a form letter available at www.democrats.org