Barack’s Social Security A-Bama-Nation

The Democratic nominee wants to turn a pension program into another wealth redistribution scheme.

June 21, 2008 - by Tom Blumer - Pajamas Media

For the first time in the history of Social Security, Obama would impose the payroll tax on a group of people — anyone earning over $250,000 from work or self-employment — who would receive no additional benefit in return. The Illinois senator would carve out a “doughnut hole,” sparing those who earn between the current maximum taxable earnings of $102,000 and $250,000 from having to pay any additional tax.

This is a tax increase that is stunning in both size and scope, as this chart shows:

. . . Obama’s proposal thus officially severs the earnings/benefit linkage for the first time in the 70-year history of Social Security. As Jim Taranto wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Monday:

Obama’s proposal to use Social Security as a means for taxing “the rich” amounts to a repudiation of the program’s original New Deal conception. Social Security is supposed to be a pension for workers, not a redistribution scheme. That is why Democrats have, over the years, resisted efforts at means testing — i.e., preventing the wealthy from collecting benefits. Obama’s proposal would convert Social Security into nothing more than another welfare program.

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