Payroll Tax Cut Part of War on Middle Class

LA Times:

Make no mistake: This is a bipartisan effort. It started back in December, when President Obama capitulated to the GOP on a budget deal by cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security. Advocates for the program pointed out then the shortcomings of this approach: It was targeted inefficiently and unfairly, skewing to the upper middle class and hurting lower-income families in comparison with the Making Work Pay tax credit it replaced.

Even more troubling, it blew a hole in the financing mechanism for Social Security by reducing payroll tax revenue by roughly $110 billion for the year. It was plain then, as it is now, that once you've cut a tax, it's ever harder to restore it.

Putting Social Security's income stream on the negotiating table for the first time in more than half a century simply provided a new opportunity for attacks on the program's stability from those who would love to see it disappear — to be replaced, no doubt, by a privatized investment program that would profit Wall Street hucksters at the expense of everyone else.

I think these are really good points.  Republicans will fight to keep the tax cuts permanent, paint anybody letting the cut expire as raising taxes, and still argue that we need to cut Social Security because it isn't solvent long-term.  Either the limit on taxable earnings should be removed, or the tax should be applied to all income and not just earned income.  This would allow a lowering of the rate, benefitting those at the lower end of the income spectrum, and it would help make the program more solvent.