Social Security payroll contribution key, but cuts proposed

Last week, the Associated Press reported that President Trump’s team is considering ending or cutting the Social Security and Medicare payroll contributions as a way to “help” working class Americans. But, these payroll contributions are key to ensuring health and retirement security for working Americans. Cuts would put Social Security and Medicare at risk.

As Michael Hiltzik points out in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, payroll contributions protect Medicare and Social Security from political attack.  In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words,  ““We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their pensions. … With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”

Payroll contributions from every worker for Social Security and Medicare turn these programs from welfare programs–which never cover all the people eligible, let alone in need of them–into social insurance programs with earned benefits for everyone. Payroll contributions allow the Social Security Trust Fund to cover the full costs of Social Security benefits. Social Security pays for itself, without dipping into general revenues or contributing to the deficit.

If Social Security contributions were eliminated or cut significantly, Social Security benefits would need to come in whole or in part from general revenues. A Congress committed to gutting Social Security could easily do so by cutting taxes and reducing revenues or reallocating monies away from Social Security to different priorities.

Even with Social Security having the monies needed to pay benefits for the next 17 years until 2034, Congressional leaders argue that Social Security is “unsustainable” and needs cutting. At the same time, a majority of the public supports Social Security expansion, including lifting the cap on Social Security contributions to ensure Social Security’s ability to pay benefits over the next 75 years.

Social Security is needed now more than ever to ensure the economic and retirement security of Americans. If President Trump were listening to the people who supported him, putting aside the people who did not, he would know that we should be expanding Social Security benefits, as 157 House members have recently proposed. We need to increase Social Security benefits and lift the cap on contributions–now at $127,200–so that the wealthiest Americans contribute to Social Security at the same rate as everyone else.

If you want Congress to expand Social Security, please sign this petition.

Here’s more from Just Care:

• Social Security: What to know before claiming benefits
• Four key differences between traditional Medicare and a Medicare Advantage plan
• Advice A to Z
• Free local resources to help adults 60 and over