Tax Cut? No, Just Another Raid On Social Security

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Investors Business Daily:

Politics: Lost in Beltway wrangling over a payroll tax cut, an ugly reality lurks: Our politicians are plotting yet another raid on the Social Security "trust fund," which is already near insolvency. When will this madness stop?

President Obama and his congressional Democrats know well how bad their spendthrift reputation is among voters as election day approaches. With Obama at sub-50% approval numbers and Gallup reporting Congress clocking in at a record-low 11%, they expect a bloodbath at the polls in November — and maybe another slashed debt rating, too.

What then could be better for Democrats than to be able to claim that deep down, they're tax cutters, too? Just like Republicans — whose corporate tax cuts in 1982 led to an unparalleled decade of economic growth.

But Obama and his Democrats don't want to direct any tax cuts toward investment for long term growth — as corporate tax cuts do — but to hand them out to taxpayers like party favors in the hopes it'll pay off come November. It's a political game, but they have few other options aside from cutting spending.

But there's a big catch: The payroll tax cut they seek is nothing more than taking cash from the back pockets of taxpayers and handing it to them up front.

The supposed payroll tax cut, as blogger Don Surber has noted, is a Social Security tax cut that comes through the Federal Insurance Contributions Act.

That means the tax cut will be achieved by taking $120 billion from the Social Security "trust fund."