If jobs were more plentiful and wages were increasing, if the economy were truly on an upward path, payroll tax receipts would be increasing. Unfortunately, these receipts aren’t any better today than they were in 2005, or the year before that. In fact, these extra payroll overtaxes are forming a similar month-to-month pattern that looks like a repetitious roadway.

Last year, it took us until April to catch up with previous trails. This year, we’re already in the groove that means things are no better for workers than they were three years ago and the government will continue to walk off with somewhere between $71 –  $85 billion of our retirement money again this year. And they’ll complain because it isn’t more.

We are already listening to politicians talk about how they’ve “got to do something about entitlements.” And the greatest crock of all is that if they don’t drastically reform entitlements these programs will eventually eat up their entire budget. Congress and the administration will be in nothing but the insurance business.

It would be wonderful if these hypocritical politicians were talking about reforming their own entitlement programs like the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) that never has enough in premiums to cover outlays, or the Federal Life & Health programs that are completely subsidized by taxpayers with no contributions whatsoever from the federal employees. For them, it’s free.

What they will do is attack Social Security, an entitlement that works; an entitlement that produces a profit every month which the politicians steal to spend on invasions, occupations, bridges to nowhere, and the like; an entitlement that provided them with $78.3 billion in “off budget” booty last year and $18.5 billion just last month, January 2007 – money that should have gone towards improving the retirement system or at least put in reserve.

There was a time when the money from payroll taxes, money that is collected specifically for Social Security and Medicare, was considered “dedicated” money not to be touched for other purposes. Using a smaller portion of that money to pay benefits to the retired and disabled was also considered “mandatory spending” from the budget. In other words, what’s collected for Social Security belongs to Social Security and no one else.

The politicians and bureaucrats have never paid attention to these words and claim to have “borrowed” or “invested” Social Security’s money in “special” treasuries which is the most ludicrous thing imaginable. It’s ludicrous because these treasuries become part of the national debt that can only be redeemed with taxpayer money. In other words, the same people who donated the surplus in the first place are now straddled with debt that amounts to paying the same taxes again plus interest.

Social Security now holds more than $2 trillion in these debt markers and Medicare holds an additional $343.4 billion. These two entitlements are now 23.7 percent and 3.9 percent of the national debt respectively.

The above clip comes from CommonDreams.com, February 9, 2007, and is just the beginning of benefit cuts the Beltway Bandits will try to impose.