Payroll tax relief extended but national debt needlessly increased

It's official: Congress has approved a deal to extend through the end of this year a cut in the payroll tax, saving about 160 million Americans a bit of money each week. A person earning $50,000 a year will save roughly $1,000 annually with the payroll tax cut. Congress extended some unemployment benefits as well and voted to keep doctors from facing a major cut in Medicare reimbursements.

But what's also official is that most of the cost of those measures -- well over $100 billion -- will be added to the national debt. Republicans at first insisted on spending cuts in other parts of the budget to pay for the tax relief, jobless benefits and Medicare funding.

But despite contrary evidence from the past decade of reckless federal spending, Democrats are wedded to the idea that government spending is key to economic growth. And so they intended to depict Republicans as obstructionist and opposed to tax relief if the GOP clung to its insistence on spending reductions.

In the end, most Republicans in the House went along with most Democrats to back the measure, and enough Republicans in the Senate went along with Democrats to ensure the legislation would go to President Barack Obama for his signature.

So you may like or dislike the legislation. But based on the absurd idea that $100 billion or so cannot be cut from a federal budget approaching $4 trillion, your share of the $15.3 trillion debt just got bigger.