Why Trump wants to dump Social Security and Medicare

I am not sure if someone much more intelligent and credentialed has already explained this to people. I just haven’t seen it written any where nor have I seen any YouTube videos explaining it. I understand this from an insiders view and believe it is important to give the “business man” occupying the Oval Office the discredit he is due for making a move on these very essential services.

I worked for the second largest payroll processing company in the United States. If you have received a paycheck ever in your life there is a good chance that one of only two companies in the US cut that check for you. The reason I bring this up is I understand payroll, and more importantly to this short essay, payroll taxes.

It is a well known fact that if you work in the US for a salary or an hourly wage, you are subject to FICA. FICA stands for “Federal Insurance Contributions Act.”and is what most of us consider Social Security and Medicare deductions on our paychecks. These deductions are relatively minor amounts and are in most cases tiny in comparison to the federal and state income taxes taken out of each paycheck.

What is not so well known to the average employee is that your employer must contribute an equal amount of FICA each time they pay you. (Actually it’s a tax that is reported quarterly but that is a different story). So if you have a total of $8.15 taken from your check for Social Security and $0.85 for Medicare, your employer also must set aside and pay $9 for that pay period just for your check. They must also match the amounts that each employee had removed from their paycheck. Each and every paycheck, for each and every employee in almost every hourly and salaried position must have that amount matched by the employer.

Take a business owner, such as Mr. Trump. Think about all of his employees across the multiple properties and hotels and offices and shadow companies he operates. Every employee he has, costs from his narrow viewpoint a whole lot of money in taxes he can’t avoid or ignore. They are collected quarterly and reported on a companies 941 tax form.

If a large employer, were ever to get into a government position where they were able to decimate Social Security and Medicare contributions, saving them hundreds of millions of dollars every year in taxes, would they not be at least a little tiny bit tempted to do so? Hundreds of millions of dollars every year that could be stashed away for their own personal retirement fund. Hundreds of millions of dollars stashed away for maybe their daughter’s presidential campaign or maybe their loudmouthed hate filled son’s campaign.

Here is the thing, no one would ever admit to tearing apart two of the most highly thought of social programs, especially since they benefit the elderly that worked all of their life and contributed fairly to these programs.

No one, except Trump. Trump didn’t state his intentions for his “Payroll Tax Relief” temporary cut to the social security and medicare contributions honestly. He claimed it would “put money in the “people’s” hands that need it the most”. He attempted to portray it as a cut that would make a difference in people’s paychecks and give them the extra money they needed right now right now.

This is not true.

While it does give each employee a tiny amount of money in their paychecks that isn’t the actual focus. The focus is on big businesses not having to match those deductions temporarily providing the wealthy corporations and large employers yet another in a long list of tax cuts that do absolutely next to nothing for the working person. The beneficiaries of these tax cuts are people that will not be reliant on Social Security or Medicare as they are already wealthy and in the case of our POTUS, covered for the rest of his life with a pension and health care — the very things people work hard every day for only to see them snatched away in a dishonest approach from a dishonest man.

Do NOT believe that if this man is re-elected that your social security and medicare are safe. They are not. They are no more safe than anything a business man can get their hands on and manipulate for profit. This isn’t just an orange mad bad story, this is a story to keep an eye out now, and anytime you hear a politician talk about payroll taxes. When they discuss cutting payroll taxes they are talking about your social security and medicare — I promise.