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About half of the Senate's Republicans have signed a letter opposing any effort to lift the debt ceiling that doesn't include Social Security cuts. In response, a group of Senate Democrats are trying to pass a measure forcing any cuts to Social Security to pass a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Bitter partisan warfare over the debt ceiling is not exact;y an appealing prospect. But perhaps it can be avoided. According to a Washington Post-ABC poll that was released today (you can download the data here), there's actually a possible fix that would avoid cutting Social Security, fulfill Republican desires to balance the program's finances and is even popular with the public.

According to the survey, more than 80 percent of Americans believe the system in crisis. And, in a reversal of recent results on this issue, Republicans are more trusted to handle it than Democrats: 44 percent of respondents favored the GOP, while only 42 percent favored President Obama (this is primarily due to Democrats trusting Obama at a low rate on this issue). But when it came to solutions, most cuts were opposed by a majority of Americans. Almost 60 percent were against raising the retirement age and almost 70 percent were against cutting scheduled benefits. The only fix that garnered majority support was lifting the payroll-tax cap so that all income, rather than just the first $107,000, got taxed. That's a reform, I'm confident to say, that the Senate's liberals would have less trouble swallowing, and according tothe Congressional Budget Office, it would wipe out virtually all of Social Security's shortfall.

So if this is just about balancing Social Security's books, it shouldn't be too difficult. We can pass the reform and raise the debt ceiling with no problem. Huzzah! On the other hand, if we're in one of those conversations where we're pretending to talk about balancing the country's books but we're actually only talking about "cutting spending" and revenues are off the table, well, that'll be harder.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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