Wednesday, December 07, 2011

The great Social Security funding shift - This line jumped out at me in the Powerline post "What does the payroll tax have to do with the pipeline?"
So the Democrats’ opportunistic drive to cut FICA taxes is most likely a death knell for Social Security, as many liberal commentators have noted. How Republicans should react depends mostly on how one views the Social Security program.
Really?  What "liberal commentators" have expressed concern about cutting FICA taxes and replacing them with general revenues?  As somebody who's kinda tuned in to this issue, I haven't seen it.  But in a roundabout fashion, John Hinderaker makes a point: Social Security used to be funded solely by payroll taxes and (recently) the special Treasury bonds in the Trust Fund.  But the current payroll tax cut being paid from general revenues and more borrowing...which just puts the debt back on the books in a different place.

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