To the Editor:

To the voters of St. Lawrence County Legislation District 6: I would like to discuss; how effective Fred Morrill is as a St. Lawrence County Legislator.

I serve with Fred on the St. Lawrence County Soil and Water Board. His service is outstanding, providing insight and guidance in financial and personnel management that can be only found from years of experience.

Over the years of service as a county legislator, Fred has repeatedly proven his professionalism, experience and true caring for St. Lawrence County and the people he so proudly represents.

With the challenges facing county government we need a man experienced and knowledgeable like Fred Morrill.

I highly recommend Fred Morrill as legislator of St. Lawrence District 6 and encourage you to support him for reelection with your vote.

Robert G. Andrews

Chairman St. Lawrence County Soil and Water District Board

Stefanik offers old

ideas for Social Security

To the Editor:

Elise Stefanik says that she wants to preserve Social Security for those already retired or about to retire and suggests that one way of doing that is to raise the retirement age and we should discuss that option after the election.

I’d rather discuss it now because raising the age won’t help much. The fund is projected to last about 20 years before reduced benefits would be necessary assuming current conditions continue.

Such proposals suggest that a raise in retirement age to 70 years old should be enacted for workers under the age of 50 or 55 at the time it is enacted. Full retirement age for those born 1960 or later is already 67 so even if we enacted the increased age tomorrow it would not result in any savings for 12-17 years because the fund would still be paying out what is currently projected until then.

We should be taking action now to preserve the fund not 12-17 years from now. It should have been done back when Al Gore brought up the issue in 2000. The longer we wait the more drastic a solution has to be.

Stefanik has also worked during her White House years with Bush on the idea of partially privatizing SS, allowing younger workers to invest some of their SS tax in private accounts. That is an even worse idea because it would reduce the flow of money into the fund immediately and would hasten the day when it could no longer meet its responsibilities to those already retired.

Her “new” ideas are not new. They are just tired old ideas that are aimed at ultimately getting rid of SS, ideas that are now being recycled in softer and more vague terms. Don’t be fooled.

What Elise won’t talk about is the real solution, elimination of the $117K cap on income that is taxable for SS, raise the minimum wage so those workers are both earning more and paying more taxes and we need to put people back to work by investing in infrastructure so that those workers too will be paying into the fund.

Cutting benefits by raising the retirement age or reducing the COLA only hurts retirees while preserving a tax break for those with high incomes.

Vote for Aaron Woolf.

Jim Bullard

Potsdam