Obama considering extending Social Security payroll tax cut to employers!

[Better Believe It]

That will reduce payroll tax contributions into the Social Security trust fund by about 200 billion dollars next year and make the trust fund even more dependent on general federal tax revenues for funding! Just what Republicans want to see. 200 billion taken out of general tax revenues to fund Social Security will make their claim that Social Security is contributing to the deficit more believable ....and true! BBI

Obama Shifts Gears From Coaxing G.O.P. to Swaying the Public
By JOHN HARWOOD
August 14, 2011

In addition to extending the current payroll tax cut for employees, Mr. Obama’s economic team is considering extending that cut to employers — doubling the $100 billion annual cost. In addition to a $50 billion infrastructure bank and a $45 billion extension of unemployment benefits, the administration is considering seeking a $75 billion tax break for companies hiring new workers.

Those steps would steepen the path for a special Congressional committee, created as part of the compromise over raising the debt ceiling, which seeks at least $1.2 trillion in new deficit reduction this fall. The White House is mulling whether to advance Mr. Obama’s deficit-reduction recommendations for that panel separately, or in an integrated package with job creation ideas.

Expectations remain low for anything beyond least-common-denominator accords — unless economic conditions and public pressure shift the political facts on the ground. At this point, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner said, the House has “no plans to take up” the president’s job creation ideas except for patent reform and pending trade deals.

Read the full article at:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/obama-shifts-gears-from-coaxing-g-o-p-to-swaying-the-public/

[mmonk]

1. The double squeeze. Attack it from both ends.

The benefit side and the funding side.

[girl gone mad]

2. It would be a good move, for once.

[Better Believe It]

3. A good move for employers? They hate paying into our Social Security trust fund and demand relief!

[girl gone mad]

5. I misread your OP..

thought they were considering an extension fully to the employee side. Sorry, I'm multitasking badly tonight.

Should have known better.

[dkf]

11. You don't think small employers are going to need breathing room?

Are you thinking we avoid a double dip?

[Better Believe It]

14. So "Big" employers also need breathing room in order to inhale these billions saved?

[dkf]

18. It's the small employers who will lay off or go out of business.

We need more small businesses and less dependence on big business.

What else can we do to help them?

Some stats from the sba:


How important are small businesses to the U.S. economy?
Small firms:

Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).
Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.
Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.

http://www.sba.gov/advocacy/7495/8420

[mmonk]

16. Wrong party ideology. In the real world, small businesses need customers

to buy their goods and services. As someone who has been a small business employer most of my life, the payroll tax rate never determined whether I hired someone nor determined whether my business was strong or slow.

[rapturedbyrobots]

21. Exactly!

Anyone who has actually run a small business knows that line of reasoning is COMPLETE bullshit. Revenue determines how many people you hire, not the SS tax.

[RegieRocker]

43. Small employers already have enough breathing room. No required 401k

or health insurance. You GOT TO BE KIDDING!

[RC]

6. No it wouldn't. That makes the social Security funding worse.

And it doesn't help anyone now or later. This is a repug type idea.

[dkf]

9. Agree.

[Pholus]

39. So here is the proof that the move will is not good for Social Security as a program.

[JDPriestly]

35. It would effectively be a pay cut for all working people. NO. No. No.

Obama is supposed to be a Democrat.

If he can double-cross working Americans in this way, he should not be considered to be a Democrat.

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Doesn't do shit to improve employment...

Attack Social Security...
Cuts revenues when that is the last thing on earth we should be doing...

[kentuck]

7. I have been saying that for some time.

It is true. Very poor decision. Unfortunately, with the Republican obstruction, that is about all he can think to do to help this economy.

[Better Believe It]

12. How does cutting employer contributions into Social Security help the economy or SS trust fund?

[kentuck]

22. It won't help the economy...

but it will hurt the SS fund by taking money out. They will not put the money back in from the general fund.

It seems that taxcuts is all that this President can think of to help this economy. But, perhaps you have noticed??

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Pretty obvious what TPTB are trying to do: speed up the collapse of economy.

Somebody must be going to make a TON of money on the downside.

[madfloridian]

10. That will cut payments to present retirees!! That infuriates me.

[awoke_in_2003]

13. I am 65 in 22 years...

I am sure Social Security will be non-existent by then. I will either die on the job or taking a motorcycle off the Grand Canyon. Democrats brought us social security, and they will help kill it.

[grahamhgreen]

15. That's a Republican position.

[SnoopDog]

17. Underfund a program... it dies.

And Obama is doing this on purpose... Oh, he has already lowered the FICA tax.

We normally call this 'proof positive'...

[tawadi]

31. This was my thinking

Then they can tell the boomers they didn't pay in all their lives.

[MannyGoldstein]

19. "Make no mistake: now our Republican friends will really, really

really, really, really, really know that I'm a person they can do business with. This time it will work. And if not, I'm considering lowering the capital gains tax to 0%."

[customerserviceguy]

20. While I don't like one single bit

the idea of cutting funds to Social Security (yeah, they make it up with a transfer payment that we borrow from the Chinese), at least make it solely and only for hiring long-term unemployed.

I'm more than happy to give up my twenty bucks a week in order to see an employer hire someone who is a perfectly good worker, whose only flaw is that they've been out of work for a long time. If the worker's been laid off a year, then suspend employer FICA for the same amount of time.

We need something to get people back to work.

[mmonk]

23. Only the payroll tax doesn't determine whether someone will get hired.

It's 100% bullshit. Only added sales determines whether an employer will take on another employee.

[customerserviceguy]

36. That's true

But it would be an added incentive, and would level the playing field between the newly laid-off, and the longer term unemployed. The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit was a part of the Reagan tax bill, and as far as I'm concerned, it was the most effective part.

[doc03]

27. Employers are sitting on 2 trillion dollars and aren't

hiring what gives you the idea another giveaway will make them hire someone?

[customerserviceguy]

37. Like I said

I really don't like the idea of any tax holiday that weakens Social Security, but extending the 2% cut to everyone willy-nilly is a worthless thing. I'd rather see it targeted specifically towards hiring, rather than just throwing money out of a helicopter.

[kentuck]

24. The President is fulfilling his promise to Repubs to cut Social Security

...and the Democrats are too stupid to see it for what it is, unfortunately.

[doc03]

25. Who the f--- is advising Obama anyway. I don't know about

where you all are but the Rethugs are running an ad about Obama's HCR cutting Medicare and creating a government panel (death panel) to ration Medicare. What does he do? Reduces funding for SS so they have a greater excuse to cut SS. Is there someone (a real Democrat that will run against this guy)?

[blkmusclmachine]

26. We're being attacked from both sides:

the Gop and the GOP-lite (AKA the "Democrats"). :mad: :nuke:

[blkmusclmachine]

28. 1st time is chance, 2nd time is happenstance, 3rd time is enemy action

n/t

[Angry Dragon]

29. Who the hell is giving this man advice??

A very stupid, stupid idea.........
Raise the cap, raise taxes on people having an adjusted gross income Above $300,000 and make it progressive.
Eliminate corporate welfare, make it Free Market like the republicans want, cut corporate loopholes.
Make hedge fund managers pay normal taxes and not capital gains on all their earnings.

[Historic NY]

30. Totally crazy idea, we all lose.

[indurancevile]

32. what a disappointing loser he's turned out to be. we should have just elected a republican &

maybe the democrats would have fought a little more.

[subterranean]

33. I wouldn't worry too much about this.

If Obama proposes it, the Republicans will reflexively oppose it.

[JDPriestly]

34. No! That is an utter betryal. Absolutely Idiotic!!!!!!

[kentuck]

38. He isn't listening...he's in a conservative bubble...

in my opinion.

[Harmony Blue]

44. It is a very poisonous

bubble too.

[ThomWV]

40. So, President Obama is continuing his assault on Social Security.

If the Republicans can't kill Social Security Obama will do it for them.

[Sky Masterson]

41. I wonder if this could help me? I run a very small 2 person business

I brought home 30,000 last year,it was my first full year working strictly for myself (My lowest net in years)and I had to pay double Social Security.It makes it pretty tight on self employed guys like me.
There may be merits to some of this.

[doc03]

42. It may help you but is a 2% savings on the payroll tax going

make you or anyone else go out and hire someone? I am retired, they could give me a 2% raise on my SS and it would have the same affect. I would have $25 extra to spend same as you, I suppose if you take a 10000 of us spending the money maybe it could make a minimum wage job someplace.

[supraTruth]

45. Bad move for S.S.; as long as S.S. pays its own way, it is DIFFICULT for CONS to git rid of it!

[Mr Deltoid]

46. Tax cuts are republican policy

Tax cuts got us where we are today

[Starry Messenger]

47. recommend.