Responding to Mr. Hightower’s Social Security at risk again, I must assert that President Clinton’s lack of reform, not President Bush’s reforming approach to the program, is to blame for the crisis our Social Security program faces today.

The 1935 inception of the Social Security program saw Americans living to age 65. The program’s initial 2 percent tax on earnings of up to $3,000 more than provided for retiring Americans. The program’s first recipient, Ida Mae Fuller, lived to age 100, paying $44 in payroll taxes and receiving $21,000 in benefits . For Americans like Ida, this new program was quite a bargain.

But today’s Americans are living longer -- 79 years for women, 74 for men -- and depend on being spoon-fed Social Security retirement checks rather than providing comfortable retirement for themselves by saving as they enter the labor force.

In order to provide retirement income for themselves, the government will give Americans born in the past 40 years approximately 1.4 percent return on tax dollars paid over a lifetime. I can do better leaving my money in bank certificates of deposit!

Social Security works today because there are about 3.3 workers per beneficiary, but when the baby boomers retire, that ratio will shrink to less than 2 workers per beneficiary. Change is necessary -- the alternative is reduced benefits or higher taxes.

Allowing younger workers to invest earnings in a retirement program of their own choosing is forward thinking. Working Americans should contribute to their own retirement, not to the retirement of current retirees. Furthermore, if workers die before reaching age 65, their “savings” with the government would be used to fund other retirement checks and are lost to their family. At least with partial privatization, if I die before I reach age 65, my family could benefit from my years of work.

In changing the Social Security system, current retirees and workers close to retirement should keep the benefits they will depend on for a retirement income. But we must change this system so that future generations will also benefit from their lifetime of work.

Mr. Hightower’s scholarly reference to President Bush’s commission on Social Security as ”garbage haulers” ignores the necessity of reworking a program that, though once was successful, will fall short of assisting future American retirees. Social Security as we know it has existed for 66 years and is a year overdue for its own retirement.

Eric A. Egger

Abbottstown, PA

This article was originally published in The Evening Sun.