Social Security cannot afford to pay all of the benefits it has promised. Beginning in 2017, it will run cash deficits that get bigger every year.
If an opponent of personal accounts wanted to stack the deck against reform, a good formula might be the following: commission a poll by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; skew the sample so that it is 43% liberal and 14% conservative (about the opposite of the U.S. population); give John Kerry a 56-44 advantage over President Bush among the sample. It turns out that even a majority of mostly-liberal undergrads support personal accounts. An overwhelming 70% believe that Social Security will not be able to pay promised benefits. If liberal college kids at Harvard and elsewhere can see their way to supporting personal accounts, what does that say about how out of touch Congressional opponents of accounts are?
Social Security has a problem, and we need to fix it. Personal accounts are the solution.
Even Liberal Students at Harvard Support Personal Accounts
Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, Institute of Politics: Survey of Student Attitudes