

Poll: Tap wealthy on Social Security By Susan Page, USA TODAY WASHINGTON  Most Americans are willing to endorse painful steps to ensure Social Security's long-term solvency — steps that nick the rich, that is. Two-thirds of those surveyed by USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup last weekend say it would be a "good idea" to limit retirement benefits for the wealthy and to subject all wages to payroll taxes. Now, annual earnings above $90,000 aren't taxed. (Related: Poll results) But some ideas that President Bush said in his State of the Union address were on the table for consideration are rejected by solid majorities. By more than 2 to 1, Americans oppose reducing retirement benefits for those now under age 55. Nearly as many say it's a bad idea to raise the retirement age, and 57% are against reducing benefits for early retirees. Six in 10 oppose raising Social Security taxes for everybody, a step Bush has ruled out. He hasn't made it clear whether that also includes boosting the cap on wages that are taxed. "We don't want to raise taxes as a solution," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Tuesday when asked about that issue. "But on specifics, we don't want to negotiate with ourselves." The willingness to support sacrifices by somebody else isn't surprising. "It's like when you ask about taxing cigarettes, the people who support it, amazingly, are those in the population who don't smoke," says Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. "If the sacrifice includes them, they think twice." The strong opposition to most proposals underscores the difficulties ahead. "There's no consensus about the solution that a wide swath of Americans support," Reischauer says. Even though Bush's address last week highlighted Social Security, he failed to convince more Americans that the retirement program is in a state of crisis or that his approach is the right way to fix it. In early January, 18% of those polled called it a crisis. Now 17% do. Support for Bush's plan — creating individual investment accounts and reducing guaranteed benefits — is unchanged from January: 40% call it a good idea; 55% say it's a bad one. The poll of 1,010 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, has an error margin of +/-3 percentage points. Views vary by income: Three-quarters of middle-income workers — those with annual household incomes of $30,000 to $50,000 — say it makes sense to limit retirement benefits for the wealthy. That's 10 points higher than among those who make $75,000 or more. Three-quarters of middle-income workers support lifting the wage cap so all income is taxed. That's 15 points higher than among high-income workers. Those affluent Americans are more likely by about 10 points to support the idea of reducing benefits for early retirees and raising the retirement age. There's another difference between the most affluent and everybody else: They are the most confident that they would get a higher rate of return than the government provides if they could manage their own investment accounts. That may be why they are the most likely to support Bush's plan, by 49%-47%. Contributing: Richard Benedetto