Offering the severance package

If unemployment rises again to the level of last summer, when people who were remaining unemployed until their Social Security unemployment benefits ran out, I will support extension of these benefits only if a Social Security severance package is part of the deal.

Under severance, any person who receives additional unemployment benefits will also be presented with an agreement that in effect terminates that person's further participation in Social Security. They get six months more unemployment stipends, but never pay into Social Security again, and will never be able to claim benefits from it again. For the rest of their lives.

That person receives a certificate, matched to an entry in the Social Security Administration's databases, showing future employers that he or she is exempt from FICA withholding, and that the employer may offer the employer's share of FICA withholding to the employee as salary or other compensation, free from Federal income taxes as well, if the employer so desires.

Likely only people just starting out in their careers will be interested in such a severance package. Those workers who feel they have "too much invested to back out now" because of their age will stay in, decline the package and the extended benefits, and try to find a job or change careers.

Unfortunately, we could offer this package only to persons who were already unemployed and facing the exhaustion of their benefits at the date the package program begins. Otherwise we'd have hundreds of thousands of people quitting their jobs and staying unproductive for months just to qualify themselves.