Here's What The American People Really Want To Cut From The Federal Budget

The Pew Research Center conducted a poll in mid-February asking respondents what aspects of federal spending they would prefer to see cut. The poll confirms past surveys that show that although Americans prefer to cut government spending in abstract terms, there aren't many specifics they want slashed.

The poll comes as the cuts known as the sequester begin to start kicking in this week. Under sequestration, every non-exempt aspect of government spending will see a cut. This will generate $1.2 trillion worth of savings over the next 10 years.

But the Pew poll found that respondents were relatively content with the size and scope of most aspects of the government, despite a general urge to cut spending in broad terms.

As the chart shows, the only aspect of government spending respondents wanted cut was foreign aid. Still, USAID is a relatively small portion of the grand federal budget, accounting for a total of only $50.7 billion in fiscal year 2012.

The least controversial portions of government spending were Social Security, veterans' benefits, and education. The latter two are both subject to cuts as a result of the sequester, but only one-tenth of respondents wanted them to be slashed.

Thank you for posting that information from Pew Research Center blam.

But where I feel that Pew is actually letting us down is the following. I'll bet that Pew didn't ask anybody they polled if they understood the Founding States division of federal and state government powers evidenced by the Constitution's Section 8 of Article I, Article V and the 10th Amendment.

And more importantly with respect to the constitutional statutes referenced above, I'll bet that Pew didn't ask anybody if they were familiar with Justice John Marshall's official clarification of Congress's limited power to lay taxes, taxes which Congress essentially cannot justify under Section 8.

"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

So it's not just a matter of spending cuts for a given issue, but the fact that Congress has no constitutonal authority to tax and spend for many issues in the first place.

For example, going down Pew's list of issues, although the Supreme Court has previously clarified that things like agriculture and healthcare are 10th Amendment protected state power issues, Pew and the people that they polled don't seem to understand that.

"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress (emphases added)." --Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited. None to regulate agricultural production is given, and therefore legislation by Congress for that purpose is forbidden (emphasis added)." --United States v. Butler, 1936.

Again, Justice Marshall had clarified that Congress cannot tax and spend in the name of issues which the states have never delegated to Congress via the Constitution the specific power to address, health and agriculture being examples of such issues.

So the issue is not cutting federal spending for certain things in the name of fiscal prudence, but to eliminate federal spending for Section 8-unjustifiable issues, letting the states tax and spend for such things, depending on what a given's state's legal majority voters are willing to pay for.

In fact, the states can always exercise their unique, Article V power to ratify proposed amendments to the Constitution to do so to allow Congress to tax and spend for such things.

Also, since the Pew poll touched on foreign aid, note that Justice Joseph Story had noted that Congress cannot use the General Welfare Clause (1.8.1) as an excuse to justify foreign aid.

"If the tax be not proposed for the common defence, or general welfare, but for other objects, wholly extraneous, (as for instance, for propagating Mahometanism among the Turks, or giving aids and subsidies to a foreign nation, to build palaces for its kings, or erect monuments to its heroes,) it would be wholly indefensible upon constitutional principles (emphases added)." --Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2 (1833).

Finally, the main reason that corrupt Congress has been spending way beyond its constitutional authority to do so for many decades is the following imo. Constitution-ignorant voters failed to recognize major constitutonal problems when Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR encouraged Congress to establish his "New Deal" programs without the consent of the Article V state majority, federal spending programs like SS based on wrongly usurped state powers.

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