need to make mortgage payments, to pay bills, and to do the shopping American business craves. The FICA holiday also will provide business with money for jobs and investment. . In contrast, the "top down" approach (saving Fannie Mae, buying toxic mortgages), while necessary, does not directly address consumer/business money needs, and has had only modest effect. . Common knowledge holds that Social Security and Medicare will face bankruptcy even with FICA. So proposed fixes invariably include benefit cuts, reducing consumer incomes, or tax increases, cutting consumer and business spending power -- the opposite of what our economy requires. . Many people fear federal deficit spending when it supports Social Security and Medicare, but not when it supports the military. Social Security spending for 2008 is approximately $600 billion, about equal to the defense budget. Ironically, both candidates for President believed Social Security will run out of money and the military will not. The $1 trillion in "stimulus" spending was authorized without increased taxes. Both candidates advocated tax cuts. . Even during the darkest days of the Great Depression, the federal government never ran out of money. Massive government spending, before and during World War II, helped lift us from the Depression. . In 1971 President Nixon eliminated any risk of government insolvency by ending the last vestiges of the gold standard. At the stroke of a pen, he assured that neither the government, nor any of its agencies, could run short of money. Social Security and Medicare, being two