In his June 16 column, The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson chastises President Obama and the Republican-controlled Congress for failing to reach a “grand bargain” that would fix the Social Security system. Mr. Samuelson has a short memory, and he is addressing the wrong problem.

The underfunded status of both Social Security and Medicare has long been a recognized problem, caused in large part by Congress’ willingness to raid the trust funds in order to meet other spending goals. If the two systems were private insurance companies, they would have been seized by the regulators long ago, as they are technically insolvent.

Workers have long complained that they are being shortchanged by the Social Security system, in that if they had the opportunity to invest their contributions elsewhere, such as an annuity, their retirement funds would build to a much greater level. Mr. Samuelson’s proposals would further reduce taxpayers’ returns.

President George W. Bush, in 2005, made his famous proposal for private accounts. This was shouted down with the rant that the president wanted people to bet their retirement funds on the stock market to benefit his Wall Street friends. Lost was the fact that the available investments would have been very conservative, including the same government bonds that the system is supposed to invest in, but at double the return Social Security now gives the taxpayer.

What is also forgotten is Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to offer an alternative plan: all the Democrats needed to do was deny, deny, deny that there is a crisis as a means of making the proposal go away and giving the Democrats the opportunity to seize power.

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