Flop!

Onomatopoiesis is, admittedly, not my best subject. So the title is supposed to be the sound of a flop. I assume that sounds like the action, so there you go.

Bill Frist and Tom DeLay have both publicly admitted now that the President's plan for Social Security reorganization will not pass the litmus test of public approval. Never mind the fact that it would actually cut benefits for those of us currently young enough to actually have to worry about the darned thing.

The organization AARP, however, still approves making minor, yet important, changes to the current Social Security system, not the least of which is increasing the ceiling for payroll tax deductions. Currently, only the first $90,000 of a person's salary is subject to FICA deductions, because it's just sort of assumed that everyone who earns more than that probably won't need Social Security anyway.

What a crock - Look at the guys who wash out of football (minimum NFL salary: 255k for a rookie) or baseball. Most of them don't find jobs that pay quite that much, and unless they've played for 5 years, they don't get a retirement benefit from their unions. But all of that money that wasn't taxed could go a long way towards making sure that they can still live out a decent retirement.

The first change, and one that could probably shore up Social Security for a very long time, is to increase payroll tax deduction limits to $150,000. It's time for Congress, and the Democratic Party, to convince the President and the Republicans that doing so, while also decreasing the current tax amount (to, say, 12 percent even, from 12.8 percent) would be a pretty good start to Social Security's course.