Then again, the same logic applies to the income tax rate change for the top earners.
Nobody increased their income taxes. The income tax decrease ended and wasn't renewed.
On the other hand, we have this called "raising the taxes on the wealthiest" in political speeches and most people here would say that the rich saw their taxes go up.
Same words apply to the FICA tax. We don't want to call it an FICA tax increase or say that rates went up.
The difference isn't one of fact but of spin. We like saying that we increased income taxes on the rich. We don't want to say that we increased payroll taxes on the lower wage earners, including that large chunk of families that pay no net income tax. Doesn't matter that the two cases are exactly parallel.
The FICA tax reduction didn't allow (R) to claim SS was going bankrupt. SS was shorted no money by the FICA tax reduction. It had zero effect on the money turned over to the SSA. It did allow them to say that it increased the deficit, because the money not collected by decreasing FICA taxes was made up by money from other sources, including debt issuance. On the other hand, few (R) actually made that point because it was trivial and temporary.
The entire (R) point boils down to two problems: (1) If you don't "fix" OASDI, there'll be a 25% benefits reduction in perhaps 25 years. If you make perhaps a 5% cut now you won't have that 25% reduction. Small cuts early in a budget shortfall make for no cuts later; no cuts now make for steep cuts later. (2) Either way, when we repay the trust fund money we need to find the cash some place, through cuts or through new taxes or new debt issuance. If we choose to issue new debt, that's going to really increase the publicly held debt. If the demand's not there, it'll increase the debt interest and that would quickly become unsustainable. Or we could raise taxes considerably. Or cut services to tax payers. All suck.
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