"except raising payroll taxes."

[jdj]

This is Bush's battle cry with regards to social security, "Everything is on the table except raising payroll taxes."

Why won't he fix health-care? Or is this his real plan? If you take away insurance and health care, everyone dies before they get old?

But besides, is he getting everyone against this so they will introduce a tax hike and then blame it on democrats? Hmmm.

[roenyc]

1. ha ha ha. damn, thats no really funny but it did make me laugh

[stray cat]

2. Remove the cap Bush!

Means test for upper one percent income bracket.

[jdj]

3. please elaborate

whats a "means test"? The more I learn about economics the less I understand.

[EVDebs]

5. Educate yourself...google 'regressive taxation' or look into 'progressive

taxation'

Means tests are determinations of how to keep a tax equitable and not being too much a burden on the lower and middle class...shoot, were only talking about the lower 98 and 1/2% of taxpayers.

They CAN afford it and without destroying the US. Read "Wealth and Democracy" by Kevin Phillips. It's about how too much concentration of wealth can destroy any empire. Ours included.

[jdj]

7. thanks for the info.

I'm in school full time and working as well, and economics is not my major, so any short cuts are greatly appreciated.

[EVDebs]

9. Oh, also read "Perfectly Legal" by David Cay Johnston Ch. 7 & 8

especially.

[stray cat]

8. Means test.

Not a real defined test but the idea is that social security benefits should be tied at some level to nead. The idea is that people in the upper 1-5% income bracket already get too many breaks with Bush waving the estate inheritance taxes and dividend taxes. If the income is sufficiently high for an individual they really don't need the benefits all that much. One possibility is denying social security payments to multibillionaires.

[Egalitariat]

10. It means if you have a lot of money, you don't get SS payments

Even though you paid into it for a long time. The poster is suggesting elimination of the cap as well as a means test, which would mean his target group would pay a ton of money into the SS trust fund, but wouldn't be allowed to get any out.

[EVDebs]

4. Precisely Watson ! This was the M.O. during Reagan's '81 Tax Cut

and subsequent 'Social Security circus, opps, Crisis'. After the 1981 tax cuts for the wealthy then the playbook says you scare the people and then create a Social Security fund, whose I.O.Us are treasury bond --the safest investment vehicle on earth, backed by the US Taxpayer...that it, the lower and middle class US Taxpayer, not the wealthiest 1 and 1/2% of course, nor globalized corporations.

You then stealthily increase taxes from 1982 through 1993 to pay for government by accessing the surplus in SS's trust fund, all the while knowing that the wealthiest will have to help in paying it back if this is to be done EQUITABLY. But Bush & co. have no such plan to pay back equitably !

Benefits will, by necessity, have to be cut in order to do Bush's plan without tax increases (mainly to the wealthiest 1 and 1/2 %).

It is well known that simply by raising payroll tax's CAP from $90,000 to $120,000 that Social Security is solvent and the problem is solved. But that would mean 'harming' Bush's Base...

[jdj]

6. I see.

can anyone speculate what amount of money we are talking about? If they tax the first $120,000 instead of the first $90,000, then is that, what, just several thousand dollars more a year...and they actually have the nerve to bitch about this?

[EVDebs]

11. Bingo. Even Repub Sen Lindsey Graham is for the $120K cap raising