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Leading up to the election, prominent Democrats like Rep. Chris Van Hollen, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, were pushing to renew the payroll tax holiday in 2013, an idea that seemed all but dead in Congress just weeks earlier. The renewed push for extending the payroll tax holiday came amidst reports that the Obama Administration is considering replacing it with a new version of the Making Work Pay Credit.
The shift in debate toward renewing or replacing the payroll tax holiday is driven by concerns over ending such economically stimulative measures while the economy is still relatively weak. Compounding these concerns, a recent analysis by JPMorgan concluded that the payroll tax holiday’s expiration would reduce consumer spending by $100 billion and would cut the nation’s overall gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 0.6 percent.
Most economists agree that a policy putting money in the hands of low- and middle-income people is likely to have a greater stimulative impact for each dollar spent than a policy putting money in the hands of high-income people.
From this perspective, the Obama Administration would be right to favor the Making Work Pay Credit; it is much more progressive than the payroll tax holiday, considering that only 27 percent of the holiday’s benefits goes to the bottom 60 percent, compared to 50 percent of the making work pay credit’s benefits. In addition, replacing the payroll tax holiday would also allay concerns from powerful voices, like AARP, that continuing the holiday will endanger the Social Security Trust Fund over the long term by weakening its dedicated funding source.
It still may be difficult to weigh the benefits of short-term stimulus provided by these tax cuts against their long-term impact on the debt. But it’s important to keep in mind that extending the entirety of the Bush tax cuts would cost $322 billion, which is more than two and half times the projected cost of the payroll tax holiday ($121 billion) and more than five and a half times the projected cost of the Making Work Pay Credit.