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...First: The Social Security and Medicare withholdings ARE NOT TAXES. ... ...The Social Security withholding is a contribution to a national public pension plan. The promise is that it will be returned. That's NOT a tax, any more than your 401(K) or IRA is a tax. Same thing with Medicare. That's also not a tax. It's a contribution to a national health care program...

Words mean things and we communicate only when we speak the same language using the same definitions. Here is a standard definition of the word "tax" (from here):

tax (tks) n.
	1. A contribution for the support of a government required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government. 2. A fee or dues levied on the members of an organization to meet its expenses. 3. A burdensome or excessive demand; a strain.

Voluntary withholding for an IRA, car payment, or some charity doesn't go to the federal treasury.

Medicare and Social Security payments are taxes taken by force and used to cover mandatory government spending. Also, most people know by now that the intent of both is revenue, that the idea has been to collect more than enough money with the excess used for general spending by way of "intergovernmental holdings" (that now top $5T). In a few years when the population ages and the excess disappears, these programs will be cancelled, benefits will end, and Democrats will blame Republicans.

The unemployed poor don't have to pay those taxes.

In a few years when the population ages and the excess disappears, these programs will be cancelled, benefits will end, and Democrats will blame Republicans.

PR only cares about emotion rather than facts and reality. Anyone who stands for facts and reality will be the natural target of the PR industry. Journalism, and its dependencies, especially the Democrat Party are the PR industry.

You're deliberately missing the point.

SS/MC withholding is now being used to claim that the working poor pay tax, because politicians with facile rationalizations understand that stupid people and their enablers believe all federal withholding is income tax. It ISN'T, and simply citing the definition doesn't make it one.

If you want to claim that SS/MC withholding is a tax because it's mandatory, you're straining at a gnat: 1/2 the people in the country make no contribution to America. Parse that however you want, it doesn't become less true, but that is exactly what liberal politicians do when they claim low wage earners are "paying taxes."

No, they're not.

Since you're a legalist, only definition 1 even comes close to the meaning of SS/MC:

A contribution for the support of a government required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government

Unfortunately for your thesis, SS/MC withholdings are not made for the support of the government. They're made for the support of the "Trust Funds," theoretically holding the money. That the government has borrowed against these funds doesn't change their purpose, and the government must eventually pay them back, or -- more likely as you point out -- default.

But neither default nor payback would be required of those funds if, as you incorrectly believe, they were fungible with the general revenue. They AREN'T. They're borrowed because their purpose is not to support the government, but rather to support the individuals paying them.

Thanks for blowing up your own silly, legalistic argument.