We have some very encouraging polling data from CBS News. The American people prefer spending cuts over tax increases by a margin of more than 8-1.
Americans strongly prefer cutting spending to raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit. While 77 percent prefer to cut spending, just nine percent call for raising taxes. Another nine percent want to do both. …The most popular ideas for reducing the deficit are to reduce Social Security benefits for the wealthy, reduce the money allocated to projects in their own community, reduce farm subsidies and reduce defense spending. More than 50 percent supported reductions in each of
those programs. …Forty-seven percent say it will be necessary to cut programs that benefit people like them to reduce the deficit.
These results show that the American people understand big government is the problem. And Republicans probably deserve some credit since they’ve been making the right noises about Obama’s misguided agenda.
But if you dig into the details of the poll, the GOP has done an inadequate job of helping people understand why various programs, departments, and agencies should be abolished. The polling data surely would be even better if Republicans were moving beyond general rhetoric and exposing specific examples of waste, fraud, and abuse. And public opinion presumably would be even stronger if Republicans were out there making a principled case that a big share of spending is for things that are not legitimate functions of the federal government.
In other words, Republicans have the ability to strengthen public opinion and get the American people even more excited about an agenda of principled, small-government federalism.
But that will only happen if GOPers actually want to shrink the size and scope of government. Based on what happened the last time they were in power, that’s still an open question.
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The GOP may cut spending to Dem programs, but they are not exactly known for holding back on spending. They will simply spend the money on their own pet programs.
It would be nice if the Repubs would actually act on this information, but I’m still skeptical.
The American government, let alone the powerful interests that control it, couldn’t care less what the American people want.
But do they want budget cuts against themselves, or just the other guys?
The big question would be: Think of the benefits you received from the government: mortgage tax deduction, the promise of social security and medicare, etc.; now, would you be willing to cut those? Not just other people’s benefits, but your own. Ask farmers if they be willing to cut farm tariffs and subsidies. Ask the baby boomers to retire later or take fewer retirement benefits.
I think you’d be disappointed with the results of such a poll.
“…that will only happen if GOPers actually want to shrink the size and scope of government…”
We have good reason to be skeptical as Veronique de Rugy points out in the Feb issue of Reason.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/12/can-we-trust-the-gop
True fiscal conservatives must realize they have no home with either of the two main political parties. In the words of Walter Williams (at least he’s the one I heard say this), “The only difference between Republicans and Democrats is to whom they want to give the money they steal from me.”
I doubt the Republicans will do anything other than apply a bandaid to the hemorrhage. Cosmetics are the call of the day – because as far as the 1 Party system is concerned, everything is going according to plan.
The only Republicans (and Democrats) who have an intention of making a lasting difference are the ones who insult and defy their own party – and there are only a few of them.
Ron Paul 2012
Things are different now. Citizens are becoming more and more aware of what our government is doing to us.
What can we do about it? Each individual must become involved in communicating with our leaders. letting them know our what we support and don’t support. Go to local meetings, write letters, phone, do whatever it takes to keep them accountable to us. If they don’t square up, vote them out of office.
God bless America.
There is no way you’re ever going to see someone go through the hassle of an American political campaign and then head to Washington DC so he/she can make themselves less powerful.
Not in a million years.
These people are in DC because they look at the amount of power there and think that they are worthy of it, that they, of all the people in the US, should be the ones to wield it.
They’re not going to make any serious changes to the structure of our government, including our unsustainable spending.
Ann In LA is correct. That’s why the best chance is to cut spending across the board, as much as possible.
Are some things more deserving of cuts than others? Undoubtedly. However, shared pain is always easier to take. Cut entitlements, cut defense spending, cut everything, enough to get this under control immediately. If we can’t do it now, then we’ll never do it until disaster has struck and it’s forced upon us.
Democrats’ 2012 strategy: Block Republican attempts to control spending, then blame them for failing to do so.
Count on it.
PacRat Jim’s insight reveals why the “budget cuts against themselves, or just the other guys” fretting of Ann in LA doesn’t really matter. The easiest cuts for a political coalition to make are cuts to their opponents goodies, not their friends’. Also, wiping out a program that enables ones opponents means there’s a reduction in the number and energy of the opposition at the next round of program eliminations.
The late Milton Friedman commented on several occasions and in print that, in hindsight, a political blunder of the Reagan administration was in making across-the-board cuts rather than achieving the same budget reductions by wiping out a select number of entire programs. Just look around you, FB and Ann in LA: An interest group surrounding some tax-eater’s goodie has just as much incentive to mobilize and scream about a 10% cut as over a 100% cut (and, as experience shews, even a small 1% cut mobilizes mad-as-a-wet-hen fury). So, the wiser budget cutter removes the goodie’s budget line entirely. After the goodie is gone the interest group organized around it tends to lose strength and disband otherwise the opposition just comes back next year angrier and better mobilized.
Here we are, almost a quarter-century past the Reagan years and most people offering advice to Republican budget cutters are repeating the same nostrums that failed for Reagan and later, for Gingrich and the post-1994 House Republicans.
As my Father told me, circa 1958,
“It’s so easy
to spend
somebody else’s money…”
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic- most families, most small businesses, when confronted with “we’re running out of money,” spend less.
Our “betters” in DC and the Media Hive? Just want to extort more money from us…
I think the Republicans in the House, led by a very capable Paul Ryan, will make some good progress in cutting spending. There is a lot of low hanging fruit. The real question is what happens after the low hanging fruit is picked. The real spending problem lies in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Cutting those will be tough. If the politicians will not do it, the bond vigilantes will—I just hope it doesn’t get to that point.
I agree to Anne in LA. She is correct!
Cut everything everywhere including entitlements. Everyone must share in the pain. Across the board. 25%, immediately.
[…] issue in the 2010 campaign and for many months before it, this recently released CBS poll [HT: Dan Mitchell] reveals widespread public ignorance about the distribution of spending between various programs. […]
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