JUDGES AVOID TAX DEDUCTIONS

Until 1983 and a landmark, bipartisan agreement to save Social Security and Medicare, members of Congress, the president and vice president and federal judges didn't pay into Social Security. They had separate retirement plans. To address the recognized inequity of congressmen who voted on Social Security but didn't participate in it themselves, Congress acted to place all these federal employees under the plan. A group of federal judges sued in 1989, alleging that deducting taxes for Social Security and Medicare violated the clause of the Constitution that says that judges shall not have their incomes reduced during their lifetime tenures. A lower court agreed and struck down the law as it applied to the judges, and now the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, leaving intact that lower court's ruling.

Well. The constitutional provision is intended to preserve the independence of the judiciary against attempts foreseen by the Founders to compromise that independence. Few Americans today will sympathize with highly paid (in the low six-figures) federal judges who complain about paying into the same Social Security and Medicare programs that everyone in the private sector must pay. This is a most regrettable turn of events.