Under an “emergency” power, the President has ordered that no Social Security taxes will be withheld from workers’ pay from September through December with the idea of prompting more spending with these savings and helping the economy. I suggest that these workers should not spend these savings but hold onto them, because the Presidential order also declares that workers must pay this back to the government next January-April through payroll deduction. If, like me, you are thinking that “this makes no sense,” you need to know that employers are now putting this goofy order into payroll action. 

On the other hand, the President could easily and completely kill Social Security by reversing himself and not making workers pay this back but instead continue the order not to withhold this tax; our retirement lifeline would become insolvent quickly and disappear, and I suspect this idea is floating right now in the White House and among some political leaders who dislike this program. Remember that Obamacare almost met this fate, beginning right after the President’s inauguration. 

This is not far-fetched thinking on my part because we all know Trump does bold things and rarely listens to experts, even those in the White House, so we must beware. There is a “slippery slope” from a good idea created in 1935 to a bad idea we may be about to see unfold. 

Grant Plymel 

Thomasville, Ga.