Biden statement:
the ones the Obama-Biden administration enforced a decade ago — that the Social Security Trust Fund will be made whole
For a couple of years during the Great Recession, the Obama-Biden administration reduced the payroll tax on the employEE share by 2 percentage points, from 6.2% to 4.2%, while leaving the tax on the employER share unchanged at 6.2%.
At the time, I looked into how that affected Social Security's future. It turns out that the payroll tax difference was made up by the Treasury's general fund. Or to put it another way, the SSTF accounting was done exactly the same way as if it was receiving the full 12.4% (6.2% + 6.2%) instead of the actual 10.4% (4.2% + 6.4%).
So the SSTF balance was not affected by so much as a dime, nor was the projected SSTF depletion date affected by so much as a minute by what was called the partial payroll tax holiday.
I went into all that at great length back in 2012, including statements by the Social Security and Medicare trustees
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1014356331#post12
As for what Caligula has just done, and assuming it stands -- it is a temporary deferral for at most a year, so it has to be paid back. This is stated in several articles I've read in the past 12 hours.
If he gets reelected and succeeds in changing the law -- who knows, I don't. Frankly, I don't like
anyone messing with Social Security -- there are other ways to give tax breaks or extra income to workers.
= new reply since forum marked as read
