From TruthDig
By Marie Cocco

In this summer of our economic discontent, it isn’t necessary to manufacture a financial crisis or to make political hash out of discussing a nonexistent one.

So I’m baffled at why the subject of Social Security keeps popping up in the presidential campaign, and all the more so because neither Republican John McCain nor Democrat Barack Obama can manage to talk coherently about it.

McCain is guilty of head-spinning turns. Having once been a supporter of partially privatizing the vast retirement and social insurance system, McCain has been more consistent during the campaign in supporting a bipartisan panel similar to the 1983 Greenspan Commission to work out future financing problems. Everything, McCain said, has to be “on the table.”

Predictably, this bit of straight talk raised the hackles of the conservative anti-tax lobby—always antagonistic toward McCain. So McCain switched back to a strict anti-tax rhetoric, but in almost the same breath said again that he would support a bipartisan commission that looks at all options.

Got all that?

More consistent, but no more comprehensible, is Obama’s idea of creating a “doughnut hole” in the payroll tax structure that supports Social Security. Currently, payroll taxes are capped at earnings of $102,000—that is, someone earning more than that does not pay Social Security taxes on the rest of his or her salary. The workers’ eventual benefits also are capped in line with taxes paid.

Read more Social Security