By Doug Cunningham

Members of Congress, listen up. The people have spoken and here’s what they told you on taxes, Social Security, Medicare, the national debt and the so-called “Grand Bargain”. A Hart Research Associates poll done November 5th and 6th revealed two very strong messages from voters: the rich need to pay their fair share of taxes and Social Security and Medicare should be protected from cuts. Pollster Guy Molyneux.

[Guy Molyneux]: “You can see by an even more overwhelming margin voters were saying they want to protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts - not that they were looking to reduce spending on those programs in service of deficit reduction. So defense of the safety net was perhaps and even more strong consensus than the need to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.”

Voters do want Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs to save money that way. Molyneux says voters overwhelmingly said no to raising the Social Security retirement age. And just 16 percent support a “Grand Bargain” that overhauls the tax code, cuts Social Security and Medicare and reduces the budget deficit. Molyneux also says polling results show Democrats won decisively on the issue of taxes.

[Molyneux2]: “American voters were saying that – for the first time really in my memory – that Democrats had won the tax issue. What had been probably the most important issue for Republicans for over a generation now – the issue of taxes – worked for the benefit of Democrats in this election cycle. We asked voters were you trying to send a message that we wanna make sure the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes? Sixty two percent of American voters said that was the message they were trying to send. Only 33 percent agreed with Mitt Romney that we should be trying to reduce tax rates on taxpayers at all income levels.”