A lot of voters were frustrated after the health care reform vote. There's no denying that. Progressives said they'd vote against a bill that didn't have a public option, and here we are today -- lots of good elements in the final version, but no public option to hold down costs and provide competition for the private sector. None of us can forget that year-long fight for a better health care system, or the emotion we poured into it. Why do I bring this up now? Because the valuable lessons we learned during that year give me a lot of confidence heading into this Social Security battle with the president's deficit commission.
There are plenty of people reading this today who think progressives' problem was failing to stick to their guns. If only we held the line, they say, we'd have a public option today. That was not the case. The Senate wasn't going to budge on a public option for reasons that have nothing to do with good public policy. House progressives -- my friends and colleagues and I -- didn't have enough cards in our hand to make it happen all by ourselves. I think progressives' central mistake during health care was telling ourselves that we did.
That was a hard lesson to learn. It meant that just standing for what's right isn't enough in Washington. Even for a long-time public servant like myself, that was a bitter pill. When you read a given political situation, we learned, you have to account for everything, not just what the best outcome would be for the American people. We knew a public option would be the best outcome, and we said we wouldn't accept anything less. Well, in Congress, to be honest with you, you rarely get what's best for the American people. We thought we could change that in one fell swoop. I hate to say it, but we were wrong.
Today, things are different. Today, what's on the table is not the creation of a large new public program that Republicans can lie about until they're blue in the face -- it's Social Security. You can lie about Social Security all you want, but it's something the American people already understand very well, and it's not something you can destroy without people knowing what that means for their families, their parents, and their own retirements. That's why we're going to win this one.
Voters wanted a public option by a pretty fair margin. Don't let Republicans ever tell you differently. Back in January, in the heat of the health care debate, a CNN poll found that 54 percent of voters favored a public insurance program. That's more public support than the 53 percent President Obama got when he soundly defeated Sen. McCain in 2008.
So where does the public stand now on Social Security? According to a new poll from GfK Roper, as described by the Huffington Post:
85 percent of adults oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit; 72 percent "strongly oppose" doing so.
Numbers like that simply don't appear in surveys of almost any other national issue that is subject to debate.
In fact, the AARP survey turns conventional wisdom about taxes on its head: half of all non-retired adults said that they would be willing to pay higher payroll taxes to ensure that Social Security will be there for them; 57 percent of adults under 50 would be willing to pay such a tax.
There's no room for debate here. There's no room for compromise. Good policy really is going to win this time, because when 85 percent of voters are telling you not to do something as stupid as cut Social Security benefits, it's not going to happen.
The president's commission will make its recommendations later this year, and when it does, both chambers of Congress have to approve them before they go into effect. The Senate has no leverage to roll the House this time. Social Security will not be damaged, the retirement age will not be raised, and benefits will not be privatized on our watch. I'd tell you you can take that to the bank, but we're not planning on letting investment banks get anywhere near your Social Security.
Today, tomorrow and the day after, my colleagues and I are going to stand up and say, "Let's strengthen Social Security, not cut it," and there's nothing anyone can do or say to make us change our minds. There's nothing more important in American public life than keeping agreements between the people and the government that serves them. When we tell working families that we value their contributions and we're going to give something back during their retirement years, we still mean it.
I started by saying Social Security, not health care, is what's on the table today. Let me rephrase that. Cutting Social Security is off the table, starting now.