Posted on 01/15/2011 6:35:37 PM PST by Halo-JM
Salvanto. (Credit: CBS)
A new CBS News poll finds that 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.
Yet most Americans could not volunteer a program they'd be willing to see cut in order to reduce the deficit - only 38 percent could name a program they would support cutting. The top responses were military/defense (six percent), Social Security/Medicare (four percent) and welfare/food stamps (four percent).
However, Americans are more willing to consider cuts when presented with specific ideas, as the chart above illustrates. 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.
(Credit: CBS)
Democrats and independents were more likely to favor cuts to defense spending than Republicans, only 39 percent of whom favored cuts there to reduce the deficit. Republicans were most likely to favor reducing money for projects in their area (73 percent), reducing social security for the wealthy (66 percent), reducing farm subsidies (58 percent) and reducing money for student loans (54 percent.)
Democrats were most likely to support reducing social security for the wealthy (60 percent), reducing defense spending (58 percent) and reducing farm subsidies (55 percent).
Forty-seven percent say it will be necessary to cut programs that benefit people like them to reduce the deficit. Forty-one percent say it can be reduced without cutting programs that benefit them.
Seventy-two percent say that deficits can be acceptable in emergency situations and when kept manageable. Eighteen percent say deficits are never acceptable, while seven percent say the government should run whatever deficits are necessary.
Most Americans do not know exactly how the government spends its money. For example, when asked what percent of the budget goes to earmarks, 41 percent said they make up less than 20 percent of the budget, 13 percent said 20-50 percent, 4 percent said more than 50 percent and 42 percent didn't know. Earmarks actually make up less than one percent of the budget.
Read the Complete Poll (PDF)
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1,178 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone January 5 - 9, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Kbaschke?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/g_YQpNz53rY
At this point, there is not much choice. Everything, I’d say, with the exception of the military, the national debt, social security and medicare.
It looks like the alphabet. EPA, NLRB, FCC, NEA, DHS...
I think a 20% across the board. and only 10% for the military.
Call me, CBS News. You can even reverse the charges. But you better give the person who calls me the heads up that they can expect to be on the phone for a while.
Sounds like a challenge. I'll start.
NPR, National Endowment for the Arts, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Energy, OSHA...
I don’t think any program should be protected. If we don’t cut it...it won’t matter if it all falls apart!
The deficit is $1.3 trillion. The 2010 military budget was $685 billion. You can’t eliminate all of the military spending. Even if you placated the libs and cut a massive $300 billion from the military, you’d still need $1 trillion worth of cuts to balance the budget. In short, their whining about the military is useless. You can’t balance this budget on the back of the military.
The hell you say.
Pass a law promising jail time to any public official who directly or indirectly provides any taxpayer benefit or service to an illegal alien.
Eleminate Dept of Education.
Cut 95% of EPA’s budget..........
Defund public broadcasting, art’s.
I could go on, but it’s just too easy.
Where is Chainsaw Al when we need him?
I agree with you, but everything needs to be cut! If we don’t do what is needs to be done...everything will be done with!
It is the nature of bureaucracies to grow without bounds, and DoD is espcially so prone since that is where all the money is.
Make it an even x%, across the board, including military and everyone else. Everyone’s ox gets gored but not by any more or less than your neighbor’s ox.
1. Tighten eligibility for welfare
2. No welfare for illegals.
3. Trim everything 10%
4. No more subsidies, grants etc
5. Slash foreign aid and UN funding
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