Time to face facts. We’re doomed:
Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country’s mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, illustrating the challenge facing lawmakers who want voter buy-in to alter entitlement programs.
A new WSJ/NBC poll shows Americans do not approve of the government slashing Social Security and Medicaid to reduce the nation’s deficit. They also have a bleak economic outlook for 2011, but feel President Obama is handling the economy well.
In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was “unacceptable” to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security “unacceptable.“
How depressing. Not that it really surprises me all that much, frankly; after all, people seem to think the federal government magically makes all the money necessary to pay for every program they can think of (including those they’ve though of 80+ times), so it follows that people will likewise believe that we can decrease our debt and control deficit spending using the same kind of magical government currency.
Cut spending. Just so long as I get mine.
Sorry, but if you think this way, you don’t have the right to criticize the teachers and union plants protesting in Madison or Ohio. Because they’re just trying to keep theirs.
But I guess the news isn’t all bleak. For instance —
a majority supported two specific measures that lawmakers might employ to shore up the shaky finances of the main entitlement programs.
More than 60% of poll respondents supported reducing Social Security and Medicare payments to wealthier Americans. And more than half favored bumping the retirement age to 69 by 2075. The age to receive full benefits is 66 now and is scheduled to rise to 67 in 2027.
Depending on how they are structured, those two changes could eliminate as much as 60% of Social Security’s underfunding, according to experts. Support for the two ideas in the poll is “impressive,” said Chuck Blahous, one of the program’s public trustees and a former Bush administration official. “I wonder if [public] receptivity is increasing.”
The poll comes as Republican lawmakers, many elected on promises to slash federal spending, have focused mostly so far on cuts to non-defense, discretionary programs. But many political leaders say meaningful deficit reduction cannot be accomplished without making changes to entitlement programs.
[…]
Overall, the new poll found deepening pessimism about the future of the economy and the country’s direction. Only 29% thought the economy would get better over the next year, a dip of 11 points since last month and the lowest since August. “This is a country that refuses to feel better,” said Mr. McInturff.
Mr. Obama’s own job approval dipped to 48%, from 53% last month, but was still higher than at any time since last May. Some 46% disapproved of his job performance. Mr. Hart, the Democratic pollster, said that until the unemployment rate dips significantly, “it is always going to be a struggle for the president to get majority support.”
Still,
As a snapshot of public opinion, the poll highlights some of the perils ahead for Republicans as their core voters and tea party supporters demand big reductions in federal spending to tame the deficit.
More than seven in 10 tea party backers feared GOP lawmakers would not go far enough in cutting spending. But at the same time, more than half of all Americans feared Republicans would go too far.
And here we thought the country was ready to to grow up.
Posh. If we don’t wise up soon, we’ll be Greece in less than a decade. Even sooner should Obama’s already surreal and miraculously high approval rate move to 50.1 in November 2012…
(h/t TerryH)
Math. Pshaw. They should poll gravity and see if we can’t get rid of that. How cool would that be?
If a consensus says gravity doesn’t exist, we could all be flying by dinner time!
SCIENCE!
Elsewhere, the laws of physics are still being defied.
Now, this is vague, and almost a push-poll. “Slashing” SS and “significant” cuts. These things have no static meaning. And this is just stupid:
It’s a sign that there is a lot of educating that needs to be done out there.
As my husband reminds me – life is hard for stupid people.
Who wants to give up free money? Not seniors, not medicare recipients, not welfare recipients, not unions, not lawyers, not lawmakers.
The age for full benefits needs to be pushed into the 70s in 20 years or so. I can’t believe these guys weren’t quietly raising the benefit age as we went along. When the program started, they picked an age that most people would never reach. It should always have been tied to demographics.
Of course, that is under the assumption that we’re just going to tinker with what’s in place now and not replace it with something else. Saving this beast will not be easy, but getting rid of it is probably next to impossible without a full collapse.
“Supporters”? As opposed to “members”? Is this analogous to athletic supporters, the jockstraps of America, i.e. the famous pragmatic moderate independent(and largely ignorant)middle that all candidates woo with a white hot passion?
Sorry, I’m feeling cynical.
Also, I mistrust polls.
Bah … this smells like lefty psyops. It is a WSJ/NBC poll.
Folks, the rot has to be systematically cut out. Take heart, one man with courage is the majority. (h/t Gateway Pundit)
Would like to see the polling internals on this one as it does not jive with ACTION at the ballot box in November. The country fundamentally understands the precarious nature of our government finances. The teaparty break down is a red herring.
Hah – just read Carin @ 4. Thats right, define significant, cause if it was pushed as “eliminate” then yeah you could expect such a reaction.
These chumps need to be taken down.
Face it: Having lived in prosperity and peace since 1945, it’s difficult for most people to believe that Really Bad Things can happen, here, in this country.
Greece within a decade? I give us two years. Maybe less. Once the dollar crashes or oil goes to $200 a barrel, all bets are off.
life is hard for stupid people.
I just wish they’d stop making life hard for the rest of us, as well.
I wonder how the basics of the Ryan plan would poll. The fear of benefit reductions must increase as one becomes closer to retirement. The phased in privatization might handle this fear reasonably well.
When someone hears “significant cut” the inexact nature might spook them whereas they might actually be reassured by “if you’re 55 or older, same system; if younger you actually get to own your account to protect against the looter politicians”.
People must know real cuts are coming somewhere deep down in their bones. Could we garner greater public support by spelling it out specifically rather than letting them imagine all sorts of scary possibilities? It’ll take some guts but I don’t know what other option we have.
I don’t consider them “unacceptable” – hell, I never expected to get anything from SS anyway, and consider any boomer who did to be an idiot.
So cut away, folks. I got no problem with lowering the level of wealth redistribution currently in effect.
I’ve got a daydream I’m quite fond of in which there’s sort of a reverse Handicapper General for the deeply dimwitted. Stupidity should be painful.
Actually, the quote I remember (except for who said it) goes something like this: Life is hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.
Heinlein, maybe?
My husband never read Heinlein. I believe my husband learned his quote from a superior officer at some point. Who prolly read Heinlein ;)
I always thought that was John Wayne, and had put it that way into my site’s random quote generator (back when I still had a site of my own, anyway)…
He had another one: “When I hear someone say ‘Life is tough’, I ask, ‘Compared to what?'”
‘Life is tough’, I ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
Life is tough, but it beats the alternative.
Who wants to give up free money?
It’s worse than that; it’s “Who wants to give up the money they’ve paid into the system for their entire working life?” As much as I’m wont to criticize the “I got mine” mindset too prevalent in those who want their government handouts, this is one case where people have a legitimate expectation that they’re going to be paid back for the “investments” they’ve been making for decades. It means an even steeper hill for the adults to climb before they can start gaining any acceptance to the idea that tomorrow’s retirees are going to have to settle for less.
I still draw some solace from the fact that we’re finally starting to talk about this stuff out in the open. Give us one more election cycle to put some more grownups in Congress, and then we can start really pushing needed reforms. With a bit of luck, we’ll have a few more voices out front talking up the need for strong medicine and shared sacrifice, moving the Overton window to overlap with “sanity” a bit more.
Hope springs eternal.
If life were easy it wouldn’t be any fun.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
The reckoning will come.
Heinlien:
“Stupidity cannot be cured by money, education, or legislation. Stupidity is not as sin; the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and the sentence is carried out automatically and without mercy.”
VDH has a very good post. A couple of excerpts, but ya gotta read the whole thing.
.
“Life is hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.”
John Wayne?
[…] Oh, another reason why we’re doomed – even 2/3 of tea party people think significant cuts to social security and medicare is ‘going too far’ to address the massive, hideous, utterly unsustainable deficit. We…..are……..screwed…….$580 billion in interest payments on the national debt – in one month! […]