Although the public recognizes the need to reform Social Security, it is not clamoring for reform and hardly sees the program as facing a crisis. Scattered polls detect the public's recognition that major changes will be needed to strengthen the program's future finances. For instance, Hart/Teeter surveys in January and September 1997 found that a steady 83% agreed "major changes" will be necessary at some point to "guarantee the future financial stability of the system."¹⁷

But, there is no consistent evidence that the public considers Social Security an urgent crisis. Social Security has yet to crack into the public's agenda of most important problems. When Americans have been asked in open-ended questions to identify the most important problems facing the country, Social Security has failed to show up at any point in the 1990s as one of the top five problems -- even when it has been lumped together with Medicare.¹⁸ An October 1997 Harris survey found that taxes, education, health care (but not Medicare), crime, welfare and the federal budget deficit all ranked higher than Social Security as the most important issues for the government to address.

Moreover, Social Security is not perceived by the public as mired in crisis. CATO's two surveys in the spring of 1996 found that less than 20% perceived the program as needing "radical change," with another quarter anticipating "major change."¹⁹ Half of Americans concluded that the program needed only "minor change" or "only some change." Parallel results were found by differently worded questions that were used in a December 1996 Time/CNN poll and a March 1997 Washington Post survey: both found a third of Americans classifying Social Security as facing a "crisis" and a half or more of Americans sized the situation up as "a problem but not a crisis." The lack of fervor is especially apparent by way of comparison with health care, where a steady 80% to 90% of Americans believe that radical or major change is required.