From the Desk of Students for Reforms in the Social Security System
Southmoore High School, 2901 S. Santa Fe, Moore OK 73160                      405-735-4900

9 December 2009

Barack Obama

The President

The White House

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The State of this Union is not at its strongest point. It has been slowly diminishing itself with bills to be paid to other countries and the borrowing from foreign nations. The day the “Baby Boomers” come to their retirement date could quite quickly bring the economy to a screeching halt. So to reduce the national debt from being trillions and trillions of dollars, the Students of Reforms in the Social Security System have thought of reducing the payout of benefits to social security from its one-hundred percent to a lower payment and gradually increase over a period of time. With these reforms to the Social Security system, the country could see a less in debt economy, making it easier to pull out of the debt for the country itself. Granted, it will not pull the country out of debt overnight but it will help in the long run.

The Social Security system was the idea of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He believed that any man or woman who had worked their whole life deserved the right to some retirement funding in which they had saved in an account for themselves, to be given the money when they have reached the approved retirement age. It would be spread out over a period to insure that they would not be required to continue to work until the day they die. The idea of putting money aside was the intention of the government in order to pay off debt and earn more national income to fix the economy during the 1940’s. The problem was not that the system is flawed, it was that the government is withdrawing money from the Social Security account at an alarming rate in attempt to pay off debts extremely fast. But the end-all of this idea is that it pushed the economy even further into debt and the government has yet to pay the money in which they borrowed back thinking that the Baby Boomers children will work the same as their parents before them when In fact they did not. The government still has not paid the money which they have borrowed from the already suffering economy. The idea for shrinking the National Debt as it is today is that the government should shrink the payout to a man and his wife who have both reached retirement at the same time and they have the idea of never having to work again. As well as people wanting to retire early the life expectancy has grown ten years from what it was in 1950. This has caused a problem for the Social Security System because people would likely be using the income from that for ten more years than they had planned on. And, with the upcoming generations the life expectancy is predicted to grow even higher. The problem with this is that the government will pay more than it has coming in from the current workers. The Social Security system could function on a forty-three workers to one retiree like in the 1950’s, as opposed to now the Social Security system functions on three workers to one retiree with this change. The country will lose more money trying to support these retirees. The changes that must be made are that we would need thirty-six million new workers to make the forty-three: one ratio functional again, but the idea of thirty-six million new workers coming out of thin air is highly unlikely and theoretically impossible. The fastest way to reduce the national debt before the Baby Boomers hit retirement is to reduce the payout of the Social Security money to the very large mass of Baby Boomers.