Trump Gutting Social Security…Take Action Now Before It’s Too Late!
Trump Toying With Tax Reform Plan That Would Gut Social Security
Given the unmitigated disaster when Republicans tried to actually repeal the ACA and replace with something much, much worse, tax reform ought to be a real hit parade of nonsense, which is already beginning.
The AP reports that the administration is considering a number of “unorthodox proposals including a drastic cut to the payroll tax, aimed at appealing to Democrats.”
No, no, no. Cutting the payroll tax will NOT appeal to Democrats at all. It is a backdoor effort to destroy Social Security in classic Republican fashion — by strangling it of funds. This is exactly what they always try and do. They create a crisis, and then run to Fox News claiming Social Security is going bankrupt because they just bankrupted it.
This is classic Shock Doctrine behavior, and I can’t decide if I’m angrier at them for floating it or the AP for reporting it the way they did.
This is exactly what Nancy Altman warned about in 2010, when the “payroll tax holiday” was implemented as an economic stimulus, and Democrats must take heed about it now.
Back then, Altman feared the 2 percent cut would become permanent. Fortunately, she was wrong about that. But she described why any cut to the payroll tax was a disaster.
[T]he federal government will have to continue to transfer $120 billion to the Social Security trust funds each and every year even as it has to transfer more and more interest payments as the trust funds continue to grow and as interest rates return to more normal levels. Unless Congress acts to restore Social Security to solvency, the Treasury bonds held in trust will have to be redeemed, again on top of that new $120 billion transfer from the general fund, starting fifteen years from now, assuming Congress even continues to make the $120 billion every year before that point. These dollars will be competing with dollars for defense, environmental protection, education, school lunches, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Pell grants for low income college students, and every other good and service financed by the federal government.
Cutting the payroll tax is the absolute wrong direction to go. The cap needs to go the other way. This is 2017, not 2010. We are not in the throes of an economic crisis, but we will be in a terrible crisis if they manage to de-fund Social Security this way.
We already have a bit of a crisis, because employers are shirking their payroll tax payments and the IRS is apparently not enforcing that, according to a report issued by the Treasury Inspector General.
My Comment: First inform others, start online and hard copy petitions….watch what the crooks and liars say and do. If they put this crap on the table you’d better call them ASAP!
