What About Your Own Shortcomings?

Barbara Kennelly, the President of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge feared the Ghost of Christmas Future more than any other he'd met during his long Christmas Eve night. I can relate. After watching congressional passage of the White House-Republican negotiated tax deal, I, too, fear for the future. I fear this tax package is the first step toward radical changes to Social Security that will impact generations of working Americans.

While some elements in the tax package provide desperately needed stimulus for millions of Americans - including far too many who are suffering near-Dickensian levels of poverty and fear - this deal also diverts $112 billion in contributions from Social Security. A "tax holiday" may sound like a wonderful gift for workers now, however this one is wrapped in Washington promises that could turn out to be as thin as tissue paper.

As we've seen in Congress these days, it's easy to enact tax cuts but virtually impossible to allow them to expire. ...

Retirees and their families will watch helplessly as Social Security becomes dependent on general fund revenues rather than worker contributions, which have successfully funded the program for 75 years. Proposals like this threaten the program's independence at this time of unprecedented deficits, forcing Social Security to compete for limited federal dollars. ...

Conservatives have long dreamed of a payroll tax holiday because it fulfills two ideological goals: lower taxes and weakening Social Security's finances.

Ms. Kennelly ought to acknowledge that her organization took more than 24 hours to announce opposition to this FICA holiday and that AARP actually supported it! If there had been rapid, united opposition to this plan, we might not be where we are today.