Poll-takers: No rush on Social Security

This isn't a huge poll, but it's as valid as those run by the media.

President Bush's plans for overhauling Social Security aren't faring too well among respondents to an online poll that U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile, began taking earlier this month. As of Friday morning, well over 100 people had answered at least part of the survey, which can be found on Bonner's congressional Web site: www.house.gov/bonner.

Some 69 percent "strongly oppose" Bush's proposal to let younger workers divert part of their payroll taxes into private accounts. They are also not in any rush to address the program's financial difficulties, despite a new report by Social Security's trustees saying the system will begin paying out more in benefits than it receives in taxes by 2017, a year earlier than previously forecast. In reply to another question, more than four-fifths agreed that "Social Security isn't in a crisis, this can wait until later."

Respondents showed more enthusiasm for overhauling the federal tax code, another presidential priority. Despite several rounds of tax cuts since Bush took office, more than three-fifths said they are paying more in federal taxes now than four years ago. Seventy-two percent support major changes or a complete overhaul of the tax code. Of that group, more than half favor a national sales tax that would replace the federal income tax and, incidentally, eliminate the need for the Internal Revenue Service."

That sounds like what I'm hearing in talking to voters. The income tax problem needs to be fixed now, they say, and take care of social security later.

Of course installing the FairTax would solve the problem -- it would make social security stable so that the older generation doesn't have to depend on the younger!