If President Trump actually proposes to cut the payroll tax in order to ward off a recession, Congress ought to ignore the scheme without a second thought.

Several news organizations reported Monday evening that Trump administration officials are considering cutting those taxes in order to stimulate the economy — yes, the same economy that Trump keeps bragging is already supposedly the strongest in history. At least one White House official later denied the plan is under active consideration. Let’s hope he’s right. The idea is a stinker.

The total payroll tax of 15.3%, half paid by employees and half by employers, finances Social Security and Medicare. Both of those retirement funds are already running out of money. The system trustees reported in April that “Social Security’s total cost is projected to exceed its total income (including interest) in 2020 for the first time since 1982.” Unlike 1982, though, that annual shortfall is expected to continue “throughout the remainder” of their foreseeable projections. By 2035, the trust fund’s reserves are expected to be depleted.

Medicare is in even worse shape. Its Part A is already spending more each year than payroll taxes cover, and is projected to be depleted in 2026.

Granted, in some respects the trust funds are accounting gimmicks, because government funds essentially are fungible. But when those trust fund reserves are depleted, the government will be forced either to substantially cut benefits or to subsidize the trust funds from the “general” fund that already is running frightening, record-high deficits each year and which will have to be used to service ever-higher debt.

And unlike “supply side” tax cuts, which in some instances at least partially “pay for themselves,” payroll tax cuts are essentially demand side jolts that might boost short-term consumer spending (at the risk of inflation), but don’t change underlying economic incentives for long-term growth. An economy with record-low unemployment and record-high deficits needs no more demand-side stimulus, especially at the cost of even greater deficits and debt.

Worse, Trump would be letting politics, not economics, set fiscal policy. The obvious reason for proposing a tax cut in the unusual circumstances of an already full-employment economy is to boost Trump’s re-election chances. The president reportedly fears that even a mild economic slowdown would ruin his electoral prospects. He seems to want to juice the economy now even at the risk of horrid long-term damage.

Yet what Trump reportedly is considering would be the economic equivalent of seeing a drug addict coming down from a cocaine high and prescribing more cocaine to “cure” him. It would be grossly irresponsible.

It would be very similar to what President Richard Nixon did by spending big in 1971 and 1972, while inflating the currency by completely delinking the dollar from gold in 1972, in order to produce an economic high during his 1972 reelection campaign.

Nixon’s tactics worked in the short term as planned. But just beyond the immediate electoral horizon, they were devastating. Combined with oil embargoes by Arab nations, Nixon’s recklessness (and, later, President Jimmy Carter’s ineptitude) catalyzed terrible economic conditions for the rest of the 1970s. That era of “stagflation” — a combination of hideously high inflation and stagnant growth – was arguably as bad a Nixon legacy as Watergate was.

Trump should not emulate Nixon. Instead, if he wants the high-flying economy to have a soft landing rather than a recession, he should stop his trade wars and stop crowding out private sector investment with record government debt. This economy doesn’t need more fake stimulus, especially at the expense of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. It needs stability instead.