Huge bipartisan majorities of Ohioans want a fix to Social Security, new poll shows

With Social Security recipients facing automatic 22% cuts in six years, Ohioans could scarcely be more unified in their demand that it be fixed, according to a poll a nonpartisan foundation is calling attention to. 

Due to decades of congressional inaction, the Social Security Trust Fund is now expected to become insolvent in six years. The shortfall will trigger an average monthly cut in Ohio of $487, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports.

AARP Ohio estimates that the program keeps more than 700,000 Ohio seniors out of poverty, so such a large reduction in benefits would plunge many seniors into poverty at a time in their lives when they can do little about it.

That’s emphatically not what Ohioans want, according to a poll commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

The August poll found that 85% of likely Ohio voters said it was important to fix Social Security. That includes 88% of Republicans, 81% of Democrats and 79% of independents.

The same poll found that many voters were unaware of Social Security’s pending insolvency.

“Over half of Ohio voters (53%) are unaware of automatic benefit cuts to Social Security set to take place in 2032,” it said. “However, once voters are informed of these automatic benefit cuts, nearly all Ohio voters say it is important for lawmakers to have a plan to reform Social Security to prevent automatic benefit cuts. This urgency for reform spans partisanship and generational divides as well.” 

It added that once they were told that the trust fund is running out of money, 75% said they’d be more likely to vote for a U.S. Senate candidate with a plan to stop automatic cuts to benefits.

The two major candidates in Ohio’s closely watched U.S. Senate race have expressed concerns about Social Security, but haven’t delved deeply into how they’d fix it. 

Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, earlier this month said that he’d raise the income level at which Social Security taxes are paid.

“To ensure that Social Security benefits are there for future generations, we need to ensure that billionaires are paying their fair share by raising the tax cap so we can extend the life of the program,” he said.

Wage earners pay a 6.2% Social Security tax only on their first $184,000 of income, and that tax is matched by employers. So applying the tax all the way up the income scale would raise a lot more money.

Ohio Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Husted has said that he believes Social Security is a “sacred” commitment that he wants to protect. But during a June appearance on the “Guy Benson Show,” Husted said he was against a proposal by Sens. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to raise the Social Security cap as Brown advocates.

“We need to secure Social Security,” Husted said in the radio interview. “We need to protect it. We need to make it stronger. I also agree that it will require a bipartisan solution. But I’m not on board with the process they’ve outlined regarding the tax increase… the targeted tax increase they have.”

He added, “This rifle approach with a giant tax increase is not the way I’d go about it.”

The interview moved on to other subjects without Husted saying what he would do to fix Social Security. His office didn’t respond to questions for this story.

The proposal he rejected is popular. The poll for the Peterson Foundation found that 72% of Ohio voters support it.

However, undertaking that measure now wouldn’t be enough. Citizens for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that it would only close 65% of the solvency gap — meaning that more needs to be done.

Sixty-eight percent of those polled said they would support capping benefits for higher income beneficiaries. Capping annual benefits for the wealthiest retirees at the normal retirement age (67 for people born in 1960) at $100,000 for couples and $50,000 for individuals would close another 20% of the solvency gap if the cap is indexed to inflation, Citizens for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates.

The group laid out another possibility that the Peterson Foundation didn’t ask about in its poll. It would be an employer compensation tax. 

It would replace employer Social Security and Medicare contributions with a flat tax on all compensation — including massive CEO pay and their gold-plated benefits. That measure is estimated to close 66% of the Social Security shortfall and half of a corresponding gap in Medicare.