Labor & Employment Law

Boehner Is Wrong. Americans Don?t Support Social Security Cuts

By James Parks

Listen up, John Boehner: The public doesn?t like your plan to cut their Social Security so your rich friends can get another tax break. In fact, according to a poll released today by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, 68 percent of probable voters oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit. The poll was commissioned by the Campaign for America?s Future (CAF), MoveOn.org, AFSCME and SEIU.  

Robert Borosage, CAF co-director, put it this way in a press conference call this morning:

Republican leaders get this exactly wrong. Last week, John Boehner was on television calling for continuing the top-end Bush tax cuts and for raising the retirement age for Social Security to 70. But as [the poll] noted, the vast majority of Americans, including two-thirds of Republicans oppose raising the retirement age and a broad majority, uniting Democrats and Independents, are for ending the Bush tax cuts.

Those conservative politicians who want to use concern about deficits as an opening to go after Social Security or Medicare risk a backlash at the polls.

To help voters understand whose side the Republicans are really on, CAF is joining with MoveOn.org Political Action to launch a major campaign to enlist candidates who will promise to support Social Security and to oppose any cuts in benefits, including raising the retirement age.   

Check out the Greenberg poll here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on August 12, 2010 (boomark / email).