Zogby Poll: Majority supports Social Security reform

I am curious as to how they worded the question to get a 52% support. In previous polls, by others, they got similar results when the question was posed simply as "do you support President Bush's plan to allow people to invest a portion of their S.S. themselves"

but they got very different results the more detailed you made the question - the more details of Bush's plan you present to the questioniee, like the small detail that Bush's plan will cut everyone's benefits, that it will require trillions of new debt, etc etc

once you presented the ugly details of his plan, support dropped to about 30%

which is about the same approval rate found in a recent NY Times Poll and a CBS News Poll

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/25/opinion/polls/main697825.shtml


I'm sure it doesn't help that his "town meetings" on this subject are nothing but shames, full of Bush supporting plants with scripted questions

 

Will Bush's plan cut everyone's benifits? I thought he said that everyone over 50 would keep the exact same benifits. Also, are you sure you mean "Trillions" in debt? A trillion is a thousand billion. You're link doesn't take you to a page that backs up your claims that everyone's benefits will be cut or that it will require trillions in new debt.

I'm not sure that President Bush's retirement accounts will actualy fix SS, however, I believe that something needs to be done. I'm not opposed to individual accounts per se, either.

 

Chase I too agree something needs to be done. Imagin that! I think SS payments are around 6 or 7% of your payroll. I would be willing to figure out some way to keep those payments and on top of that pay 4% more for a private account. And still keep my 401K and IRA.

 

Fascinating. Polls can tell you a lot, right?
Excerpt from the Washington Post:


Bush has had a hard time persuading Congress to go along with his agenda, in part because surveys show that much of the public has soured on him and his priorities. In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken last month, 47 percent of Americans approved of Bush's performance, tying the lowest marks he ever received in that survey, back in mid-2004, when Democrats were airing tens of millions of dollars' worth of campaign attack ads.

Similarly, just 31 percent approved of his handling of Social Security, an all-time low in the Post-ABC poll, while only 40 percent gave him good marks for his stewardship of the economy and 42 percent for his management of Iraq, both ratings close to the lowest ever recorded in those areas. Other surveys have recorded similar findings, with Bush's approval rating as low as 43 percent.

Such weakness has unleashed the first mutterings of those dreaded second-term words, "lame duck," however premature it might be with 3 1/2 years left in his tenure. "The Democrats are doing everything they can to make this president a lame duck," Republican consultant Ed Rollins complained on Fox News on Friday. William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wrote recently about "the impression -- and the reality -- of disarray" in urging Bush to wage a strong fight for the nomination of John R. Bolton as U.N. ambassador.

"He's not a lame duck yet, but there are rumblings," said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian. Dallek said Bush's recent travails remind him of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who overreached in his second term by trying to pack the Supreme Court, a move that backfired. "Second terms are treacherous, and presidents enter into a minefield where they really must shepherd their credibility and political capital," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/30/AR2005053000891.html



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