Letter to the Editor:
With all due respect, I take issue with Joe Pettit’s Letter to the Editor appearing in the March 7, 2025 edition of Westchester Rising and Yonkers Times (“Social Security – Who is Stealing Our Benefits?”)
Here are basic facts of the Social Security Program, initiated in 1935 during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and expanded over the years by several Republican and Democratic administrations:
- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Social Security program’s constitutionality in cases argued in 1937, 1960, 1987 and 2012;
- Social Security provides for a wide variety of benefits – Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) for retired workers and their survivors; Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) – for those disabled and cannot work; and SSI for persons who are aged, blind and disabled.
- When the program started in 1937, about 54,000 Americans were receiving benefits at a cost of $ 1.3 million; today, roughly 72 million Americans receive benefits at an annual cost of $ 2.9 trillion (Social Security and Medicare);
- Mr. Musk’s recent assertion that the Social Security Administration (SSA) failed to record the deaths of millions of people over the age of 100 is erroneous, according to the well-regarded Concord Coalition. Since Social Security’s enactment, more than 530 million social security numbers (SSN’s) have been issued; but the SSA maintains a computer database system that filters out those persons who have passed away – while no system is 100% perfect, there is no way there could be the number of dead or non-persons that Mr. Musk says there are.
Recently, the SSA Trustees estimated that Social Security and Medicare will not be able to meet all their financial obligations in 2035 and 2036, respectively, as a result of demographic changes.
The problem is not fraud in the Social Security program. It has worked well for nearly 90 years. The real problem lies in ensuring that there will be adequate funds to meet the future needs of all Americans.
Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue (Congress and the White House) need to come up with solutions to solve this problem, just as they did in 1983. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “the time is now” to get this done!
STEPHEN R. ROLANDI
Larchmont, New York
(The writer is an adjunct professor of public administration and formerly served in the administrations of New York City Mayors Edward I. Koch, Michael Bloomberg and Governor David Paterson. A life-long Republican, he is active in the Ripon Society, Principles First, and Moderate Republican PAC).
