"At the end of the year, on the assumption that I win, I'm going to terminate the payroll tax. ... We'll be paying into Social Security through the general fund."--President Donald Trump, last week at a press briefing.
What a deal. If you will do yourself the kind favor of re-electing Donald Trump, he will rip the 6.2 percent payroll withholding for Social Security right off your paycheck forever.
And he'll keep Social Security coming as usual by tapping the basic treasury.
It's so simple, so painless. It makes you wonder why no one's thought of it before. The only thing I recall ever coming close was when Dire Straits had that hit song called "Money for Nothing."
The payroll tax for Social Security is 6.2 percent of your income taken off your check and a matching 6.2 percent paid simultaneously in your behalf by your employer. If you do away with all that nonsense, then, voila, employees and employers will have more money. They'll be so happy and spending-frenzied that the economy will practically explode with commerce and growth.
Currently these annual payroll tax receipts for Social Security come to about $1 trillion--that's with a "t" and "r," which is nothing anymore because trillions are the new dozens.
So, what you do, you see, is go over into the basic federal treasury and grab $1 trillion and send it over to Social Security to replace the terminated payroll withdrawals so that seniors can still eat and pay utilities and so forth.
It's Social Security for free. Nobody feels a thing.
Does the federal treasury have this $1 trillion lying around? Well, yeah, sure, in a way.
It can print it. One part of the government can put out some paper and another part of the government can buy that paper.
That's how we did that big virus relief of $2-plus trillion a few months ago. That's how we're running free and clear right now toward ending the fiscal year with a projected $3.7 trillion deficit.
What's the harm of a deficit of a trillion extra when you have one already of $3.7 trillion? And we'll actually only put one month of these deferrals on the current fiscal year, which ends Oct. 1. Next year we won't need any $2-plus trillion in stimulus because the virus will have gone poof, or been vaccinated against, most likely. Russia says it has Trump covered on that.
Anyway, our accumulated national debt is only a little more than our gross domestic product.
This kind of basic math is what worked for this president when he was in the casino business in Atlantic City.
Now, beware: There are these pesky reporters, representing the deep state and uninformed in business or math, typically pestering the president with questions about how you give up a dedicated source of revenue for aid to seniors to tap $1 trillion out of a budget that's currently operating toward being $3.7 trillion in the hole.
That's the kind of ignorant question that this brave president has to put up with from the fake news media every day.
And he must deal with even more sinister forces. The deep state is embedded right there in his own White House.
Within an hour of the president's saying straight out on live TV, "I'm going to terminate the payroll tax. ... We'll be paying into Social Security from the general fund," the big newspapers were reporting that aides in the White House had explained that the president had not said, "I'm going to terminate the payroll tax. ... We'll be paying into Social Security from the general fund."
These gaslighters said that what the president really said was that he merely would suspend payroll taxes only for the remaining months of the calendar year, then require no payback for those few months.
Sometimes Trump surely feels as alone in his bravely righteous wisdom as Lincoln felt.
Then there is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a far-left organization. It has piped in to say that even a mere suspension is problematic.
It asks: What if businesses are spared the taxes for these few months but Congress won't let the president forgive these advances or, even worse, what if Trump isn't president next year and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in charge?
And: What if employers have to pay back a big additional tax bill next year, even for the payroll taxes of an employee who has quit and can't be tagged for his share?
What if? What if? What if? Blah. Blah. Blah.
Yet here is the greatest cynicism of all: Some preposterously allege that this great president is simply playing Americans for fools by giving them a tax break now and the hollow promise of a tax break forever--and free Social Security henceforth to boot--to get their votes in November.
As if all he cared about was himself.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.