I've been listening to campaign ads for a while now regarding Social Security and Medicare and how to fix them. There has been information that one side or the other wants to increase costs, and the other side wants to do away with them or reduce the coverage provided by them. I also hear all the time that they are both "entitlements," as if they were welfare or handouts.

I, for one, am tired of hearing these claims. Social Security and Medicare are not handouts. Working people of all types have contributed their hard-earned money to them for all their working lives and have earned the protection they provide.

If memory serves, it was the Democrats who in the late '60s began to "borrow" from the funds until now they are devastated.

If there is a fix, it will be to move the money back and keep the fingers of Congress out of it. It would probably take a constitutional amendment to accomplish this, and I am afraid no one will take on that task.

There was no problem with these programs until Congress got their hands on them.

Ronald Cook

Bluffton