UNION COUNTY — Democratic state senate candidate Lisa McCormick claims that widespread, misleading attacks on the program are putting Social Security at for risk current retirees and slashing benefits for future generations.

“Conservative politicians need to be told, ‘don’t use the deficit as an excuse’ to cut Social Security,” said McCormick. “Attacking Social Security is both cruel and unnecessary. It needs to stop.”

McCormick said the nation’s retirement fund has a balance close to $3 trillion and steady income from worker salaries that will keep the program fluid for many decades.

She said those reserves could be much higher except that the tax that support Social Security is now capped on salaries over $110,000.

“If we eliminated the cap on Social Security taxes, the revenue will rise by close to fifty percent and we would have enough money to safely increase benefits, lower the retirement age and exempt taxes on a worker’s first $25,000 of income,” said McCormick. “People lose sight of how rich America is as a nation because our current tax structure has become wildly unfair.”

“The Social Security system has been the bedrock of retirement security for Americans for over half a century,” said McCormick. “It’s unfortunate that regular political organization insiders like Ray Lesniak, Joe Cryan and Nick Scutari have been silent on this issue as Republican propaganda machine chips away at public opinion with a steady stream of lies.”

“In 2009, this payroll tax cap was set at $106,800 dollars, and roughly 6 percent of the population has earnings above the cap,” said McCormick. “Due to growing income inequality, the share of earnings above the cap has risen from 10 percent in 1982 to over 16 percent in 2006.”

“The existing cap means that higher-income individuals pay a smaller share of their income in Social Security taxes than middle-class employees,” said McCormick. “Including the employee and employer shares of Social Security and Medicare taxes, earners in the middle fifth of income distribution pay an average effective payroll tax of about 11 percent while the top one percent of earners pay just 1.5 percent on average.”

“Eliminating the cap would have a modest impact on the standard of living of upper-income taxpayers,” said McCormick. “In contrast, an across the board hike would affect everyone, with a disproportional impact on low- and moderate-income workers and benefit cuts would be even worse.”

“Social Security works and America needs to elect leaders who will refute obvious lies propagated by people who want to privatize and destroy the system because they have an irrational fear or hate of government,” said McCormick. “Without Social Security, the economy would be in much worse condition, since the program lifts 19 million people out of poverty.”

“Just as increasing the minimum wage would stimulate the economy by giving workers greater spending power, a more solid and reliable foundation for America’s retirees will contribute to a healthier financial cycle for all people,” said McCormick.