海角大神

A that:

More than three in four Americans believe the cost of the government鈥檚 major entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, will create major economic problems for the U.S. in the next 25 years if no changes are made to them. At the same time, Americans do not provide a mandate for raising taxes or cutting benefits to address the situation.

If you want to take a 鈥済lass half full鈥� view, however, the poll also shows (emphasis added):

62% do support one approach or the other. Specifically, 12% favor both options, 30% favor a tax increase but not benefit cuts, and 20% favor benefit cuts but not a tax increase. Still, the data show that there is little consensus on how to address a problem most Americans see looming, and more than one-third of Americans (35%) oppose both options.

In other words, if we鈥檙e to come to any agreement on how to improve the federal budget outlook (not just agreement that there鈥檚 a problem with it), we鈥檙e going to have to do the 鈥渕utual sacrifice鈥� kind of compromising, not the 鈥渞ewards all around鈥� kind we鈥檝e been practicing over the past decade.

Obviously that鈥檚 a hard sell any time, but it is pretty much impossible in an election year.

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