All the rhetoric about the debt crisis on network news is confusing and contradictory to what we have been told in the past. How does social security, medicare and unemployment figure into the crisis. These are all supposed to be self funded programs. Social security tax withheld from the workers pay and and the corresponding employers contribution are supposed to go into the social security trust fund and are not supposed to be used for any other purpose, these funds are remitted on a weekly, monthly or annual basis by the employers. and as far as fairness for the lower, middle class income earners it is non existent. Those earning in excess of $106,800 are exempt from withholding and employer contributions to the fund. This very effectively exempts all of those million $ bonus's. If the earnings cap for SS contributions were to be eliminated, it would result in equal contributions of income percentages for ALL workers and provide several million of additional dollars to the program but that would require all these political contributors to be equal to every person and the political establishment could not allow that to happen to their financial angels or czars and political crony appointments.
The same concept hold true for unemployment funding. Every employer must contribute a percentage of wages to each of the individual states. These percentages are revised every year with the relationship of contributions received to benefits paid for each individual employer. The current employee layoffs we have been experiencing has increased unemployment claims and this has affected the contribution rate of every employer as the number of each employers employees has increased for the past 3 years.
Could all of these politicians claims in including these programs in the debt crisis be an admission that these programs are being financially canalized by the current political establishment.
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