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This is becoming an old story, but the lesson is always there for the taking , poll after poll after poll after....
( Marist/McClatchy , 4/10-14 [pdf])
WASHINGTON -- Alarmed by rising national debt and increasingly downbeat about their country's course, Americans are clear about how they want to attack the government's runway budget deficits: raise taxes on the wealthy and keep hands off of Medicare and Medicaid....On tackling the deficit, voters by a margin of 2-to-1 support raising taxes on incomes above $250,000, with 64 percent in favor and 33 percent opposed.
Independents supported higher taxes on the wealthy by 63-34 percent; Democrats by 83-15 percent; and Republicans opposed by 43-54 percent....
Voters oppose cuts to [Medicare and Medicaid] by 80-18 percent. Even among conservatives, only 29 percent supported cuts, and 68 percent opposed them.
Marist limited the questions to the programs on the table in the Republican plan--abolishing Medicare and turning Medicaid into block grants, and didn't include the program Sen. Dick Durbin and his Gang of Six are dragging on to the table: Social Security. But polling shows that cuts to Social Security are just as unpopular as with Medicare. Just an example, last month's WSJ/NBC poll , which found more than three-quarters of Americans opposed to significant cuts to the program.
When Americans are clamoring for tax fairness, and for the preservation of basic social insurance programs they have invested their own tax money into, government needs to listen.
