Right stimulus, wrong tax...

I'm happy that the House Republicans are going to stop messing up discussion of the continuing payroll tax cuts with partisan blather about the Keystone pipeline or contraceptive services or whatever doctrinaire dead-on-arrival issue they're thinking about at the moment…

…and by the way, I actually feel some residual sympathy for Rep. John Boehner, talk about real heroes trying to get the puppies back in the bag while they should be spending quality time on trying to get re-elected….well, it's not a lot of sympathy, but there's something there…

Anyway, I'm glad to see the path being cleared to continue the cuts in payroll deductions for the Social Security tax, but ONLY because it's a fiscal stimulus measure that probably is most efficient at getting more money in circulation immediately so our fragile economic resurgence continues to bloom.

Even a temporary cut in the Social Security tax is a dangerous detriment to the long-term financing of Social Security benefit payments. This tax cut should be allowed to expire at the end of this year.


Let's get back to the full deduction for the Social Security tax in 2013, and let's start steadily raising the cap on earned income that's subject to the tax. We all know we need to put aside more money for future benefits payments that most of us want to look forward to. I think most of us feel good, in varying ways, about paying something in now and getting something back later...and yes, I think there should be a means test for Social Security benefit recipients---if you already have gobs of money, you shouldn't be getting a Social Security check.

And by the way, I think all Americans should be paying more taxes to get and keep all the things we want.

Pay more taxes, oh yeah