Well, the holiday is about to end, but who’s going to complain? It lasted almost two years, and everybody knows that vacations can’t go on forever — as much as we might like them to.

We refer to the so-called payroll tax holiday, enacted at the end of 2010 as a way of putting more money in the pockets of families who needed the cash and were likely to spend it — a recession-fighting tactic that attempted to stimulate economic growth.

Prevailing wisdom has it that Congress will allow the tax cut to lapse when members return after the election, in large part because members have bigger fish to fry — dealing with automatic spending cuts and tax increases that kick in if they don’t make progress on deficit reduction.

The payroll tax is the automatic deduction that funds Social Security and Medicare. Although it will have some unwelcome consequences, returning the Social Security rate to its previous level makes sense. Anytime the current Congress appears poised to do the right thing, it’s worth taking note.

Many policymakers regarded a payroll tax cut as having more potential to stimulate the economy than other strategies because the money flowed more toward middle- and lower-income families and was therefore likely to boost consumer spending. The downside to that approach is that when the tax break ends, the pain will also flow in the same direction.

Lowering the payroll tax on Social Security from 6.2 to 4.2 percent of income translates into a $700 annual tax cut for someone making $35,000. American families have saved an average of about $1,000 from the lowered rate. That’s a substantial amount of money, and the lower down the income scale you go, the greater significance it has.

Just as withdrawing a tax cut can administer financial pain to a taxpayer, withdrawing the stimulative buzz of the tax cut collectively can impose a deadening effect on the economy. The additional revenue going to the government is money that won’t be going to households; a struggling economy hardly benefits from less consumer spending.

But the tax cut was supposed to be temporary, and the longer a tax cut stays on the books, the more challenging it becomes to not regard it as a fixture.

The ill-conceived Bush tax cuts that have done so much damage to the country’s fiscal situation are a case in point. And many economists believe that the economy, although not wowing anybody with its vitality, is strong enough to absorb the drop in consumer spending that would result from restoring payroll taxes to former levels.

More to the point, restoring the payroll tax to its normal rate would be part of getting our fiscal house in order. No serious observer believes the country can eliminate the deficit and pay for the many programs and services people want exclusively by sticking it to the rich.

Although adjusting the distribution of taxes so upper-income people stop paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do less well-off taxpayers is important — budgetarily and as a matter of fairness — it is only part of the equation.

Pain is ahead for everybody, in the form of higher taxes and fewer benefits.

The case for ending the payroll tax cut is simple: Letting it expire will put $100 billion into the treasury next year, and help maintain the fiscal integrity of one of the federal government’s most valued programs.

The holiday was nice while it lasted, but there’s no such thing as a free one, either.

— The Valley News of White River Junction (Vt.)