Reason-Rupe Poll: Congress Should Cut Spending, Forget Gun Control
Plus: 20 percent qualify as libertarian, Social Security is as popular as it is misunderstood.
Fifty-four percent of Americans say Congress should cut spending from current levels and 62 percent say Congress should forget about gun control and move on to other issues.
Social Security is widely popular, with 64 percent having a favorable view of the retirement portions of the program. But it's also widely misunderstood as an individual retirement account rather than a transfer payment financed by current tax dollars.
A plurality—45 percent of respondents—still dislike Obamacare and one in five Americans qualifies as libertarian based on responses to questions about the role of the government in social and economic affairs.
Full details from the latest The Reason-Rupe Poll, a quarterly, national survey of 1,003 people via cell phones and landlines, are online here. Past results are also online.
Reason's Polling Director Emily Ekins spoke with Nick Gillespie about the results and the survey's uniquely interactive features of the poll, which allows for follow-up questions and deeper insights. For instance, when respondents learn that that future retirees are unlikely to receive back the amount of money they paid into Social Security, they become open to reforming an entitlement system whose trustees say is unsustainable in its current form.
Edited by Todd Krainin. Camera by Josh Swain and Amanda Winkler.
About 5 minutes.
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