Gallup released some counter-intuitive numbers this morning in a new poll that finds that people over 30 favor Paul Ryan's deficit plan over the one proposed by Obama, with even higher support from those over 50. This is the same Ryan plan that proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher system in 10 years, when most of this demographic will just be entering the system, increasing the average beneficiary’s costs by 40 percent. It’s also the plan that cuts Medicaid by as much as $1 trillion in the next decade and leaves the door open to Social Security reform, making it possible that these people will retire only to find they paid a working lifetime’s worth of payroll taxes for nothing.
The public seems to hold a strong sense that the Republicans are better equipped to manage the deficit, with polls regularly finding more Americans trust them to set the budget. But disapproval for the actual cuts proposed in their plan tends to be in the high 70s. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found 77 percent of Americans opposed to Social Security cuts, 76 percent opposed to Medicare cuts and 67 opposed to Medicaid cuts. When respondents are told the Ryan plan contains these cuts, support for it drops. A recent Democracy Corps survey found 48 percent support for the Ryan plan when respondents are only told how much it will reduce the deficit. Once respondents were told the program cuts the plan requires, support fell to 36 percent.
It's not clear why Obama's outreach with his deficit reduction plan still isn't hitting home with Americans over 30, but Obama-or-Ryan poll questions are clearly missing some of the complexity of public feeling on the issue. The good news is that Harry Reid announced this afternoon that he will bring the Ryan plan to a vote in the Senate, which should help raise public awareness of the severity of the cuts it contains.
