Social Security & Medicare Notes

Democracy Corps declares Bush SS initiative dead

This is good news on the Social Security Front. This report of poll results is from the Democracy Corps (requires free Adobe reader - forward to page 7 of document):

Priorities and the Collapse of Social Security

"And by the way, support for the president's Social Security initiative has collapsed. The more voters hear during the president's 60-day campaign to educate the country, the less they like it. Today, just 34 percent support the idea of Bush's Social Security reform - down to its lowest point. Opposition is up 8 points in a month, now at 58 percent. But after a brief period of assessing the private account, the country is determined to put a knife in this idea. In the last
month, opposition has jumped to 60 percent, up 9 points, and half the country is strongly opposed. This idea is as dead with the public as anything the administration has offered."

Based on this report of a series of polls, it appears that the American public recognizes that Bush's efforts to "revamp" Social Security into private accounts are really an effort to destroy an important, effective and working program for ideological reasons and replace it with an extremely expensive fig leaf that has little likelihood of performing as he suggests it might. Since the money to pay for this ideologically-inspired monstrosity would be borrowed on top of the already excessive federal deficit, it is getting the reception it deserves.

That is a testament to the good sense of the American public.

posted by Richard @ 11:34 AM