Top Democratic Pollster Says Don't Mess with Social Security Or Else Face the Wrath of Voters in '14 [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/fixing-and-expanding-social-security-wildly-popular



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What follows are remarks by longtime Democratic pollster Celinda Lake on how Americans across the political spectrum want Social Security securely funded and expanded, including raising taxes to do that. Lake said this reframing will become a Democratic theme in 2014 and could become one of the biggest upcoming political issues, even though it is being ignored by the Washington establishment.

Here are Celinda Lake’s remarks as transcribed by AlterNet:

“I want to tell you what real people think. First of all, Social Security is one of the most popular programs out there. It is wildly popular with the public. White men, who usually are not that good about government, love Social Security. They don’t want government to do anything to hurt their Social Security. Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, are all wildly in favor of Social Security. And even young people, and we were some of the ones who did the original research that showed that millennials were more likely to believe in UFOs than believe that Social Security would be there when they retired, still like Social Security. And as they have spend more time in this economy, are more adamant about it, both because they see the impact it has on their grandparents and their parents, and also they see how really difficult it is to put retirement away.

“People believe overwhelmingly that Social Security has been good for the country, not bad for the country. We did some great work with Social Security Works and the task was how do we message successfully Social Security? My number-one answer, not facetiously, was keep out of the way. It’s a core value. It’s more popular than apple pie on the Fourth of July. We have to make sure that our messaging doesn’t diminish the strength for Social Security.

“My second point is, people think Social Security is completely unrelated to the deficit. They believe overwhelmingly that it’s a different pot of money. And it is a key way to keep this economy going—and a key way to avoid the deficit, to the extent that the deficit is produced by keeping people out of needing government services. If you want to keep people out of government services, you support strong Social Security.

“People do think there should be some changes, but the kind of change matters. It used to be that Americans were all, yahoo, let’s go, change. And now people say, there’s good change and there’s bad change.... The number-one change that people want is to lift the cap [in which only the first $113,700 in income is taxed to pay for the program]. And when we first started going around with data on this—and it’s true in every state we polled, North Dakota, Montana, Alaska, every state—people want to lift the cap.