Is That An NBC News/WSJ Poll Up Scott Walker's Ass?

Rachel Maddow mentioned the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll on her show tonight.

From MSNBC:

Strong majorities of Americans say they are comfortable with states requiring their employees to pay more for their retirement and health care to balance state budget deficits, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

But the public is adamantly against eliminating public employees' collective-bargaining rights -- as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is pursuing.

In the poll, a whopping 68 percent find it acceptable requiring public employees to contribute more of their pay for retirement benefits; 63 percent are fine with requiring these employees to pay more for their health-care benefits; and 58 percent are OK with freezing public employees' salaries for one year.

But just 33 percent say it's acceptable -- and 62 percent say it's unacceptable -- to eliminate these employees' collective-bargaining rights as way to deal with state budget deficits.

In addition, 77 percent believe that public employees have the same collective-bargaining rights (when it comes to health care, pensions, and other benefits) that union employees who work for private companies have.

Video here.

Even the Wall Street Journal admits:

The results don’t bode well for Wisconsin’s newly elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, who is locked in a standoff with statehouse Democrats and unionized state workers over these rights. Many of the Republicans gearing up to take on President Barack Obama in 2012 have seized on the budget battle in Wisconsin, a crucial swing state, as evidence the country wants to dramatically scale back government spending.

Hmmm...will Gov. Walker continue to claim "the people" are with him on this? And just which "people" would they be, anyway?

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