Budget Talks: Who Speaks For The American People?

A “serious” deficit commission in a democracy would come up with deficit solutions that reflect what the public wants. Here are some of the polling results compiled at The American Majority Project Polling:

Social Security & Medicare:

• 53% support Collecting Social Security taxes on all the money a worker earns, rather than taxing only up to about $107,000 of annual income.
• 57% oppose raising the retirement age from 66 to 67.
• 64% oppose spending cuts to Social Security.
• 82% oppose cutting Social Security benefits in order to reduce the debt.
67% oppose cutting Social Security to make the program more solvent in the long term.
• 66% support enacting Social Security taxes on wages about $106,800 (the Pay Roll Tax Cap) to make the program more solvent.
• 64% oppose spending cuts to Medicare.

Lots more polling on Social Security at The American Majority Project Polling

Taxes:

• 74% believe eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries to help reduce the budget deficit is mostly or totally acceptable.
• 68% believe that phasing out the Bush tax cuts for families earning $250,000 per year is mostly or totally acceptable to help reduce the budget deficit.
• 72% of one group of 512 participants favored raising taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year over cutting important programs once they received details on the impact of the budget cuts. That percentage had been 62% before receiving details of the cuts.
• 53% believe it is totally or mostly unacceptable to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% .
etc…

Lots more polling on taxes at The American Majority Project Polling

Military Spending:

• 67% support minor or major reductions in funds to national defense.
• 66% support removing all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 49% said to cut defense “even if it means eliminating programs that bring jobs to your state.”
Pew Research Poll, March 8-14, 2011 etc.

More polling on military spending at The American Majority Project Polling

Union Employees and Collective Bargaining Rights:

• 81% support the rights of workers to unionize to negotiate with their employers.
• 77% believe public employees who belong to a union and work for the state government, city government, or school districts should have the same right to bargain when it comes to their health care, pension and other benefits like those members of unions who work for private companies.

More polling on labor rights at The American Majority Project Polling

Job Creation and the Economy:

• 56% believe creating jobs, rather than spending cuts is the more important priority for the federal government right now.
• 56% agree that “it is time for government to take a larger and stronger roll in making the economy work for the average American.”
• 62% believe the government should focus on creating jobs, even if it means increasing the deficit in the short-term.

More polling on jobs and the economy at The American Majority Project Polling

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.

Page 2 of 2 | Previous page