Republicans must stop calling Social Security an entitlement because the beneficiaries pay for it!

An opinion echo published in the Odessa Texas newspaper "Odessa American".

MaineWriter - it baffles me to realize how Republican are able to get away with giving Social Security the label of being an "entitlement". Everybody who earns a paycheck is paying for Social Security and we beneficiaries have earned every cent of this retirement benefit.

Letter to the editor from Charles Cotten, Odessa, Texas

I am so tired of hearing news media and politicians referring to Social Security and Medicare as entitlements. They are not entitlements, they are earned benefits that we paid for and continue to pay for in the case of Medicare.

My family has paid for five generations into the system that the government mandated and made us an explicit promise that they would honor when we retired until death. That promise has been kept for my grandparents, parents and me so far, but I worry for my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

It is not their fault or the fault of the people that our elected officials chose to corrupt the system for reasons other than what it was designed to do and used the money for other purposes and left us with worthless IOU’s that they are now having to borrow billions to cover and increase the national debt.

We need to wake up (!) and elect officials that are going to do what is best for the American people and not their particular party.

If the media and the politicians continue to refer to earned benefits as entitlements then, by God, I am entitled and so is every other working person who made this country what it is today!