Your May 17 editorial missed the point of the Bush proposal concerning the amount of the FICA witholding to be put into a taxpayer’s private account.

The proposal is to let the taxpayer use 2 percent of the total amount of one’s earnings per year, not 2 percent of what he now pays. When this 2 percent is matched by the 2 percent the employer contributes it will mean 4 percent of the earnings of $25,000, or $1,000 a year will go into a private account which is a far cry from the $31 you reported.

FICA now takes 7.6 percent of a worker’s salary which is matched by the employer for a total of 15.2 percent. With 4 percent of this amount going into a private account the government will still be getting 11.2 percent for the total Social Security fund. R.M. Forsberg Ellsworth