Readers write

Overhauling Social Security is not that difficult

Social Security Administration officials have recently warned that the Social Security Trust Fund faces a major shortfall. They warn the SSA will be required to reduce benefits to beneficiaries as early as 2032. This problem has been a slow-moving train coming at the American people for more than 35 years. GOP representatives make incessant noise about “entitlement reform.”

The stark truth is that Congress has not fixed Social Security because it is not interested in saving the program and making it viable. There is an easy fix here, and Sen. Bernie Sanders has made sensible suggestions to overhaul the ailing Social Security system.

The maximum salary cap for FICA tax withholding is currently $184,500. The fix here is easy. Congress should collect FICA tax at the current payroll rates for all annual salaries up to $5 million per year. High-income earners, such as professional athletes and Wall Street investment bankers, would pay enough annual FICA taxes under this system to allow Congress to bolster the balance of the Social Security Trust Fund. This would eliminate the need for “entitlement reform,” and would allow benefits to continue to be paid to SSA beneficiaries in the future.

STEVEN HARRELL, JEFFERSONVILLE

Absence of USAID evident in Ebola outbreak

A Time magazine article reports a rise in violent conflict in areas USAID no longer serves. After DOGE shut down USAID, economic chaos has led to violence over scarce resources.

Time also reports that USAID has provided food, medicines, clean water and vaccines to more than 60 countries, and this aid could be absent by 2030, leading to 14 million deaths. And this prediction was before the recent Ebola outbreak.