The Oval Office squatter has really stepped in it politically on his ongoing obsession with ending payroll taxes. It's an idea even Senate Republicans have been arguing against putting in a coronavirus relief bill for months, because they understand that threatening the financing for Social Security and Medicare months before an election is really stupid. They're much sneakier in their efforts to destroy Social Security. Trump just signs an executive order to do it and then stands behind a mic on national TV and says when he's reelected he'll "terminate" the payroll taxes that fund the programs.
"We will be ending that tax, we'll be terminating that tax," he promises, saying "it's a big deal for people." Yes, it will be. Joe Biden and his team understand just how much it matters to people, so they're running this ad in Florida. "Donald Trump stepped off the golf course," the narrators says, "and signed an executive action directing funding cuts for Social Security. He also proposed slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from the Social Security trust fund every year, putting your hard-earned benefits in jeopardy." The background images of Trump on the golf course really make the message hit home. It's exactly what Trump advisors have been trying desperately to avoid, furiously backpedalling on Trump's promise to end the programs' funding.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who reportedly opposed Trump's payroll tax suspension order, insisted on Fox News that a Trump administration would make sure that the funds were replaced from the Treasury general fund, and that Trump “in no way wants to harm those trust funds, so they’d be reimbursed just as they always have in the past when we’ve done these types of things.“ He also said that if Trump is reelected, he’d “push through legislation“ to make sure that the suspension of payroll taxes would be permanent, “so in essence, it will turn into a payroll tax cut.” Which means that Social Security and Medicare would eventually end up having to be funded out of the Treasury permanently, which spells the end of Social Security.
Even Larry Kudlow, Trump's favorite quack economist who has been the driving force behind Trump's obsession with this tax cut, recognizes the political quicksand he's dumped Trump into. He told CNN's Dana Bash that Trump “will protect Social Security and Medicare” and said that Trump never said anything about making this tax cut permanent. “When he referred to ‘permanent,’ I think what he was saying is that the deferral of the payroll tax to the end of the year will be made permanent,” Kudlow said. “It will be forgiven. The tax is not going to go away.” He said that on Sunday, after Trump had already made his promise to make the cut permanent. A promise Trump reiterated on Monday. "We'll be terminating that tax," Trump said.
Somehow the promise from Trump to defund Social Security and Medicare rings truer than the promises he's made since 2015 to "save" the programs. After all, now that he has the chance to act on it, he's made his intentions perfectly clear.
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