A crisis exists.

Charles Morris's assertion that there is no Social Security crisis is simply untrue. Morris writes that after 2018 "the trust funds will have to start digging into their accumulated surpluses," which he claims have been mounting for the last twenty years. The truth is that these surpluses do not exist; over the years, that money has been spent on other federal programs. The "trust funds" consist of Treasury bills that can only be paid back from the federal government's general revenues. In other words, starting in 2018, we will have to start raising income-tax rates (or some other taxes) to pay for Social Security benefits. After that, the problem will continue to worsen, until by 2078 the costs of Social Security and Medicare will exceed the entire federal budget. If this doesn't constitute a crisis, I don't know what does.

JEROME F. WINZIG

Minneapolis, Minn.

THE AUTHOR REPLIES:

As my article makes clear, the seventy-five-year deficit in the Social Security trust funds, on fairly pessimistic estimates, is less than $4 trillion. The cost of extending the president's tax cuts over that same period is just short of $12 trillion, while the cost of the new Medicare drug program is $8 trillion. The $4 trillion deficit in Social Security, moreover, could be covered by relatively minor program changes without gutting it as the president has proposed. If the administration were truly concerned about the country's future ability to pay principal and interest on government bonds, it could drop its insistence on extending the tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. To the extent there is a "crisis," in short, it has been created by this administration.

CHARLES R. MORRIS