A commercial advocating the campaign of former state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. that is funded by the Congressional Leadership Fund Super PAC lies about legislation designed to ensure the solvency of Social Security, which is co-sponsored by Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski.
“No one blows taxpayer cash like Tom Malinowski,” says the deceptive ad, which makes that flatly untrue assertion that the Democratic congressman “sponsored a bill to raise your payroll taxes nearly 20 percent.”
The legislation Malinowski co-sponsored would make millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate as everyone else because payroll taxes are not collected on an individual’s wages over $142,800.
Malinowski’s legislation would apply the payroll tax to wages above $400,000, so the wealthy would pay the same rate as someone earning $50,000 a year.
In fact, Malinowski’s legislation would only affect the top 0.4 percent of wage earners but the Republican ad says it would “raise your payroll taxes nearly 20 percent” even though it actually would prevent the Social Security Trust Fund from going broke in a dozen years.
Social Security’s trust funds are projected to run out of savings in 12 years.
The Social Security Board of Trustees released a June 2, 2022, report on the financial status of the nation’s retirement system that said the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, which pays retirement and survivors benefits, will be able to pay scheduled benefits on a timely basis until 2034, when the fund’s reserves will become depleted and income will be sufficient to pay only 77 percent of scheduled benefits.
Malinowski’s legislation would answer President Joe Biden’s call to protect Social Security from Republican attacks and expand the program for beneficiaries.
“I commend President Biden and Congressman Tom Malinowski for supporting my plan to improve benefits and strengthen Social Security for years to come, which compare sharply with Republican plans to cut benefits, privatize, and even end the program entirely,” said progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick.
Payroll tax revenues will continue to cover a substantial portion of benefits even after the projected depletion dates, though replacement rates are expected to drop.
McCormick endorsed a proposal called the Social Security Expansion Act, that was recently put forward by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, which would extend Social Security’s solvency for 75 years, increase benefits by $2,400 per year.
However, Malinowski is co-sponsoring the Social Security 2100 Act proposed by Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., which would extend the program’s solvency into the next century.
“In 2020, Social Security lifted 22 million Americans out of poverty, including more than 16 million seniors. Before it was created in 1935, about half of our nation’s seniors were living in poverty. Today the senior poverty rate is just 8.9 percent,” said McCormick. “Yet, despite this success, Republican Tom Kean has no plan to rescue the nation’s retirement system from a looming disaster that will strike before this year’s kindergarten class graduates from high school.”
Although Kean is waging a deceptive campaign attacking fundamental progressive values, the liberal Republican has received many contributions from Democratic mega-donors, including more than 100 New Jersey residents who financially supported Hillary Clinton.
A cursory examination of campaign finance reports that was published in January, showed that Kean received a total of $117,924 from 128 Hillary Clinton contributors.
Hillary Clinton lost two races for president —2008 and 2016—while Tom Kean Jr is a three-time loser in congressional contests: 2000, 2006 and 2020.
One big name Democratic contributor who helped finance Kean’s political career is Dennis J. Enright, a financial adviser specializing in complex infrastructure, governmental and public-private partnerships who has handled over $5 billion of financing involving taxpayer money.
Enright’s website credits him with orchestrating the Union County Utility Authority’s $360 million bond sale in 1998 and the $2.4 billion transaction merging the Garden State Parkway with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
According to OpenSecrets, Enright contributed about $576,738 in 377 political contributions to committees and candidates over the past 22 years, about 20 times as much going to Democrats as to Republicans.
Even though the senator announced that he would not seek re-election to a seventh term in the State Senate in Trenton, Enright gave Kean’s state campaign account the maximum of $2400 in February 2020, the Democratic mega-donor’s largest contribution to any GOP candidate ever.
McCormick has been a critic of establishment Democrats like Malinowski over corporate contributions and insider stock trading and she challenged US Senator Bob Menendez in the 2018 Democratic primary election, but she said “devious Republicans like Kean pose a far greater threat to working class Americans.”
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