DC Politicians Beware: Voters Want the Employment Crisis Fixed -- If You Mess with Social Security or Deficits, You're Toast

Even while the politicians and pundits keep telling us that the federal deficit is a huge and pressing problem, a new public opinion survey finds that a majority of American voters have their own view of what deficits mean to our economy, and how best to deal with our economic woes. They favor progressive strategies for bringing the deficit beast to heel, and a healthy majority rejects the Right’s preferred course of balancing the budget on the backs of the elderly and infirm.

But the survey, conducted by the Dem-leaning polling firm Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner (GQR), also found that the Right's campaign to stoke anxiety about the deficit has had an effect. The researchers concluded that voters in their sample are concerned first and foremost with jobs, then with jobs, and they’re also worried about jobs -- but many Americans are anxious about the deficit, in the near-term, because they believe it "slows job growth.” 

That means that progressives have to strike a delicate balance -- when they dismiss concerns about high deficits out of hand, conservative messaging wins. When asked the question cold -- without context -- more people in the survey agreed that “The danger of putting the burden of debt on future generations by not focusing enough on deficit reduction” outweighed “The danger of throwing more people out of work and extending the recession by focusing too much on deficit reduction.”

But addressing the budget gap ultimately comes down to a question of priorities. When progressives acknowledge that large deficits are in fact problematic over the long haul, their approach to getting the shortfalls under control is far more popular than the alternatives pushed by Big Business and its conservative allies.

By a 52-42 margin, more voters believed that cutting government spending is the best approach to kick-starting the moribund economy than investing “more to put people to work, develop new industries, and help businesses grow in expanding, new areas.” It’s a testament to the power of the corporate message machine, but it’s also a false choice. As economist John Irons noted last week, "Deficit reduction and short-term job creation are not competing priorities. Job creation is needed today to ensure a strong economy and a solid tax base tomorrow: you can't reach reasonable budget targets without a strong and rapid recovery, and you won’t get a strong recovery if you pursue austerity too early." Americans appear to understand that. When asked a slightly different question that combined a plan for deficit reduction over the long-term with immediate efforts to get the economy going (“While we need a plan for deficit reduction, our highest priority should be…”) the numbers turned right around, with 51 percent in favor and 43 percent opposed.

Respondents were offered 11 different proposals for reducing the deficit over the long-term -- everything from raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to establishing a national sales tax. Across the board, the most popular proposals were progressive in nature; eliminating tax breaks for companies that outsource American jobs scored highest, followed by a windfall tax on Wall Street. Eliminating the cap that limits Social Security taxes to the first $107,000 people earn ranked third. “The least successful message,” wrote the authors, “focused on broad spending cuts even including Social Security.”

Contrary to what the Washington Post’s editorial page tells us on an almost daily basis, slashing and burning Social Security and Medicare is still a “third rail” of American politics. Three of the four options for which voters held the least enthusiasm were raising the retirement age for Social Security, upping the age of eligibility for Medicare and replacing Medicare with a voucher program -- all proposals being pushed by various Republican lawmakers. Fewer than one in three responded positively to the Right’s vision for “entitlement reform” and other deep spending cuts.