1/31/2013 – Americans want to raise payroll taxes and Social Security benefits (Washington Post)

Seventy-three years ago today, the first Social Security checks went out to beneficiaries. The anniversary comes at a difficult time for the program. It narrowly escaped a cut floated by the Obama administration in the fiscal cliff negotiations that would have reduced cost-of-living increases going forward. While it’s not in danger anytime soon, it does have a 75-year funding shortfall, one which has even advocates like Nobel laureate economist Peter Diamond calling for its finances to be shored up.

So the National Academy of Social Insurance hired the marketing firm Matthew Greenwald & Associates to conduct a survey of a random sample of Americans to see how they’d like to see that shortfall closed.

Read the full article at The Washington Post.