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THE ATTEMPTED SOCIAL SECURITY RIP-OFF

1. Only people making less than $90,000 a year pay the full Social Security tax. Interest, dividends, capital gains, business profits are all exempt from Social Security tax. If your wage or salary from your job is greater than $90,000 in a year, you pay social security tax only on the first 90 grand.

2. Since its inception, Social Security has received $1,635,443,000,000 more in taxes than it has paid out in benefits. We call this surplus the Social Security Trust Fund. More than ONE POINT SIX TRILLION DOLLARS. Experts estimate that Social Security will continue to run a surplus until 2018, at which point it will start to have to drawing down the Trust Fund. In the current configuration, the Trust Fund wouldn't run out of money for several decades.

3. The U.S. government has borrowed the entirety of the Trust Fund.

4. Since wealthy people are taxed at a lower rate than people making 90 grand or less, this amounts to a loan from the middle and lower classes to the upper class.

5. Republican columnist Charles Krauthammer says that there is no trust fund. In other words, the government won't pay the loan back. He says this to justify President Bush's proposed Social Security rip-off. According to Krauthammer, the rip-off has already occurred. Of course, neither Bush nor Krauthammer refers to it as a rip-off; in their view, the poor and middle classes SHOULD be paying higher taxes than the rich.

6. As Bush has admitted, his proposed rip-off does nothing to address the long-term fiscal instability of Social Security. Some of his franker supporters, such as the aptly monickered Dick Armey, has referred to his proposal as step one of the phase out of social security. As Republicans chanted in a rip-off rally in Pennsylvania, "Hey hey! Ho ho! Social Security has got to go!"

7. Eliminating the $90,000 wage cap would do a lot more to strengthen Social Security's bottom line, and it would be fair.