Entitlement "reform?"

This is an open letter to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

I was watching you just now on MSNBC and I am confused.

You referred to a need for "entitlement reform." And, for some reason, I was having trouble understanding why one needs to "reform" something that someone has earned. Because that is what the word "entitlement" means. And, at the age of 56, I feel that I have sufficiently earned certain entitlements from my government that will protect me when I get older.

Currently, my 80-year-old father is receiving Social Security. I am certain he benefits from Medicare. By "reform," do you mean to take away my father's benefits that he had worked hard all of his life to receive? Currently, my older sister is receiving the Social Security disability entitlement. By "entitlement reform," do you mean to take away her income just because she has a disease that will eventually kill her? Do you think she ought not receive the benefit because she is, somehow, not worthy of receiving the entitlement she worked for?

Everyone in the workforce today is paying in to the Social Security system, unless they are a member of the clergy who has opted out of the system.

Not too long ago, I ran into a National Guardsman. He had been deployed to Iraq two times and Afghanistan once, so far. He told me that we needed to do something about "these entitlements." Knowing that he, too, pays into the Social Security and Medicare system, I asked him where his uniform came from. He stood a little straighter.

He told me that the Guard issued him his uniform, as they issue the uniforms of everyone else in his unit. I told him that he has to do something for that uniform and asked what he did. It was then that he recounted his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, the training he went to on weekends and so on, as well as all of the military training he had, thus far.

I told him that he was entitled to wear that uniform because of his service and his sacrifice. The uniform is an entitlement. He has earned it. He told me that he now thought that maybe we ought not mess with entitlements.

Are you suggesting that our soldiers should supply their own uniforms?

Entitlement has become the new Republican "dirty word." But an entitlement, Senator, is earned. And it sounds to me like you are interested in taking what Americans have worked hard for and have paid for away from them. And I just don't think you would really want to do that.

Can you please explain to me what "entitlement" means to you?