Savings and Debts

* I read Column Right (March 12) by Charles Krauthammer and had to respond. Krauthammer claims that trying to protect Social Security Trust Funds is just a smoke screen for Democrats to defeat the balanced-budget amendment. He contends that it isn’t possible to run up a federal budget deficit and also have a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund. While the Social Security issue may be a smoke screen, there is no logic to the argument that money can’t be saved even while in debt.

Many of us have a mortgage and a retirement account. Is the money I have been saving in my IRA a “fiction” because I have a mortgage debt? If I were to follow Krauthammer’s logic, I don’t “really” have any money in my IRA because of my other debts. This just doesn’t make any sense.

JONATHAN TROST

Huntington Beach