Voices

Schumer and Hatch Call for Payroll Tax Break

A bipartisan pair of Senators, Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have proposed giving employers a payroll tax break for hiring unemployed workers.

They outlined their proposal in an op-ed piece Monday in The New York Times. “Starting immediately after enactment, any private-sector employer that hires a worker who had been unemployed for at least 60 days will not have to pay its 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on that employee for the duration of 2010,” they wrote. “The Social Security trust fund will then be made whole with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget between now and 2015. That’s it.”

The idea seems promising, but the senators have yet to introduce legislation. As the Obama administration prepares to introduce its budget, and the budget begins to wend its way through an often dysfunctional Congress, this bipartisan proposal may perhaps find a place there or in the jobs bill that the Senate is expected to take up this year.

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