Letter: Social Security needs to be fixed now

Social Security will run out its Trust Fund (about a $5.3 trillion chunk of the national debt) by the early 2030s. At which time it will only be able to pay 75 percent of benefits.

We can raise taxes, decrease benefits, or do some combination of both.

If we do nothing, we are decreasing benefits, as in the first paragraph above.

We should have come to some smaller, less painful compromise 10-plus years ago, in my opinion. Everyone who cares about Social Security should be willing to come to some compromise, because if we do nothing, it just keeps getting more and more painful until we do.

Every previously proposed compromise or change never affected those 50 years old or older, to give people time to plan ahead. Decreased benefits will affect those who are now 50 years or older, so unless your plan doesn’t include Social Security and you want to throw those benefits away, you need to urge Congress to compromise on a Social Security fix.

This story was originally published February 12, 2017 at 4:13 AM with the headline "Letter: Social Security needs to be fixed now."