According to this poll by Reuters and IPSOS, a solid majority of Americans want the deficit cut. Their minds must have been embedded with the idea that magically cutting the deficit will solve all our economic woes.
With economic worries dominating the run-up to the elections, 57 percent of Americans want the U.S. government to cut the deficit in hard economic times while 39 percent support deficit spending to stimulate the economy.
The trouble is where do you cut the Federal Deficit? The most obvious place is the Department of Defense, since the largest slice of deficit spending comes from spending related to the military and for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But I doubt those who favor spending cuts wants military spending to go down. Indeed, military spending is expected to grow next year (once it passes the filibuster) and I seriously doubt either Republicans or the Democrats will push for major cuts.
I suppose we could eliminate all those “useless” and “pesky” Federal agencies such as the FDIC, EPA, FDA, SEC, USDA, OSHA, FEC, EEOC, DEA, FBI, ICE (which includes the Border Patrol), NASA, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Veterans’ Administration, the Small Business Administration, etc. The implications of that, though, would be catastrophic for the health, financial security and safety of most Americans, and those agencies and departments don’t represent all that much of the budget in any event.
And despite the Tea Party desire to remove government from their lives no one who receives Social Security or Medicare wants those ‘government bailouts” to end (except for Wall Street, Republican and conservative ideologues and the Super Rich like the Koch Brothers, for example).
We could, I suppose, end subsidies for Big Agriculture, Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc., while also eliminating corporate tax breaks and loopholes that allow many corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, etc. However, the cacophonous squealing of all those who would lose their precious “government handouts” which would be emitted from the mouths of their well paid lobbyists would resound in the halls of Congress for weeks and months until, as always, those prized subsidies for America’s corporations would be spared the ax.
Which leaves tax hikes, or more specifically allowing the Bush administration tax cuts to expire. Problem is, that while a majority of Americans favor allowing taxes to rise on earned income over $200,000 (or on amounts over $250,000 for families) very few support allowing the Bush tax cuts for all Americans to end. Yet that would be the easiest fix for lowering the deficit, though it would do little to benefit the economy as a whole.
The truth is that the Republicans had eight years to lower deficits if they had really wanted to do so. Instead they chose to dramatically increase deficits, increase our national debt and eliminate the budget surpluses President Clinton left them when he stepped down in January 2001. When Wall Street looked like it was going to crater because of Bush’s lax enforcement of the few remaining laws that governed Wall Street and because of the elimination of financial regulations, it was Bush’s Treasury Secretary and his Federal Reserve Chairman that opened the floodgates of cash to bail out the Too Big to Fail Banks with little if any accountability for how that money was used by those banks.
Yet, somehow the Republicans have convinced many people that this result was all the fault of Obama and Congressional Democrats. The mess left by the outgoing Bush administration and the National Republicans own unwillingness to compromise on legislation that could have helped the economy is completely glossed over or conveniently forgotten.
So there are now all these people who believe the GOP narrative that reducing the deficit will solve all our problems while simultaneously believing that tax increases are a bad idea.
The poll found 68 percent of registered voters think lowering taxes creates jobs, and 60 percent think reducing the budget deficit creates jobs. Only 50 percent believe government spending creates jobs.
They have been sold a bill of goods by Republicans and the corporate media. The Republicans and other deficit hawks talk a good game, but I’d like to know how they expect to do one without the other. I’d like to hear which federal programs and departments will be slashed or eliminated and which spending cuts the GOP deems necessary.
The Republicans won’t provide us with their plan to reduce the deficit because they don’t have one. Yet somehow many of the same people who have been conned into thinking there is a magic deficit cutting wand that will cure all our ills also often believe that returning Republicans to power is the right thing to do because Obama “overreached” with an “agenda” that was “too liberal.”
IF THE Republicans regain control of the Congress they will not cut the deficit. Past history shows that to be true. They have promised to shut the government down and investigate the hell out of the Obama administration (and perhaps start impeachment proceedings), and I do believe they will follow through on those promises. However, they will not pass any laws or take any action to restore our economy or benefit the ever shrinking middle class.
Meanwhile critical infrastructure needs go unmet. More jobs are lost. We continue to fall behind Europe and China in the technologies and industries that will be critical to our future economic well being. The Party of NO! and of “Know Nothings” is not the answer. But, as this poll demonstrates, too many people are falling for the disinformation campaign by the GOP and Big Business aided by a clueless and willing news media.
If these people turn out to vote the Republicans back into control of Congress in November, God help us. Nothing good will come from such an outcome, and much misery for the vast majority of Americans that could be ameliorated by the government will continue or worsen.
And it will be all good for John McCain.
They are currently winning the argument by calling for budget reduction while offering a plan to increase the deficit by a trillion.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the military bases in Central Asia are subsidies for Big Oil.
I like the example of the Pinkertons, a private police force used by various businesses to beat up or in some cases kill union organizers. That’s part of the history of American labor that doesn’t get discussed.
After WWII the CIA, while ostensibly fighting Communism, was fighting for the capitalists and against the working classes of various countries where U.S. corporations had interests. The Central American death squads trained by the CIA and our military were in place to keep the profits of the wealthy secure.
That is, the CIA and the American military have more allegiance to BP than to the American citizenry. They are the Pinkertons of the world.
I agree with you. I’m just weighing in here, I don’t know whether I’m adding anything or not. Maybe some idea about where the Democrats should be going with all this.
I think there are two separate issues here. One is how this all came about and who is responsible. I’m not sure that everyone is really as gullible about this as it may seem. The second problem is what the Obama administration has done about it. This is the heart of the issue, because even if you hate the Republicans, and even if you know how much this administration accomplished under very difficul conditions, the fact is that the present economy is terrible. To put it mildly, whatever success it may have been so far, it just doesn’t feel like success.
Public opinion on this is understandable. I would readily agree that cutting the deficit, in and of itself, is good. It’s extremely high. On top of that, very few believe it worked. I agree that it didn’t work very well — because it was too small. However much worse things might have been without it, the fact is that unemployment is very high. That’s what people see — there was a stimulus, it didn’t work. The idea that massive government stimulus is the surest way to create jobs, and that the added deficit would right itself as more people went back to work and started spending again, is either unknown to most Americans, or not believed.
The Democrats ought to emphasize how their attempts to help the middle class were constantly obstructed by the Republicans, and that the GOP has no solutions. This is all true, and I don’t think it would take much to get people to realize it — to reinforce what they know already about “the part of ‘No’.” That the Democrats do have solutions, and what they are. It may be too little too late, but the GOP “appeal” is 100% smoke and mirrors. Most important — actions speak louder than words. But at the same time, Dems need to explain what they are doing and what they want to do.
Sorry — “Very few people believe it worked” should read: “Very few people believe the stimulus worked.”
Do you mean like when the president lies and says that all combat operations in Iraq have ended and when that lie is BLASTED as the truth here?
Funny that, gullible people.
They’re not gullible, they just don’t have time to find the truth. The media fails to report the truth, and only feeds this mentality.
Moreover, this is one poll where I blame Obama. It’d be nice to have Professor Obama going before the American public making a case for Macro 101, but he hasn’t, and he isn’t. He’s talking about the deficit just as much as the media. Obama fail here.
He IS making the case in town-hall after town-hall. But 1) it’s not reported in MSM and 2) ) a message like that is very difficult to convey: how do you explain that in order to save the economy you have to temporarily increase the deficit, while at the same time you have to say that yes, the current deficits are unsustainable in the long term and you will have some hard decisions to make ?? So I’ve seen the President explaining it quite well but politically that’s not effective. You need short soundbites. NOT easy.
How any voters go to town hall meetings? How many more watch TV? You’ve got to get your message on TV. He’s got the “bully pulpit”, but rarely uses it. When he does, he talks like he’s addressing a college crowd. Clinton knew how to talk to blue collar workers. I think it might be because of his foreign/intellectual upbringing. Clinton went to a public high school and was actually dirt poor as a young child. Later, his mother married money, but he continued with the public schools and the kids he grew up with.
One exception might be Roosevelt. He always sounded upper-class, but you could imagine having lunch and talking with him man-to-man, even though you be calling him “Sir” while you were doing it. I guess Roosevelt knew how to say things simply and down-to-earth in that upper-class accent.
I’m indebted to whoever posted that audio clip of his second nomination. “And if you re-elect me, they will not only hate me, they will learn to FEAR me!” Try to imagine Obama saying that.
Bullshit.
Obama explaining to America Macro 101 would go something like this:
“Good evening. I have proposed a $800 billion dollar stimulus to the Congress as our first act to end this crisis. My economic advisors have all told me that this is too small, but I am going to work with Congress to make that number go up. My political advisors have told me that we cannot get something higher than this passed, but I am going to do everything possible to make it higher.
Here’s why cutting spending during a recession is dumb as fuck, and why it would actually increase the deficit. Here’s why tax cuts suck. Here’s why we should be spending on high-speed rail and solar and wind. Here’s why we should be spending on college grants, and even giving students college-loan relief by taking their debt under the Federal government’s burden.
The long term deficit is a problem, but it’s not due to our spending, it’s due to health care. If we fix health care, we fix the deficit. Any other talk about the deficit is to steal from the poor to give to the rich.
Spending this money would reduce the deficit, it will reduce unemployment, and it will make America more safe and secure.”
Obviously not worded like that, but you get the gist. When has he EVER said that? Never. He’s said the long term deficit is caused by Medicare and SS. That’s not the same thing as saying health care SPENDING is the problem.
This case should have been made ages ago, right after he proposed the stimulus.
Instead, they’ve allowed the GOP to run with the talking point:
“Unemployment is somewhere around 7.5% before the stimulus and more government spending. Unemployment goes to 9.5% after months of stimulus spending. Unemployment went up because of government spending.”
And to an everyday American, it’s easy to believe that, especially after 30 years of St. Ronnie Logic.
He’s been feeding that by trying to save face rather than just admitting “Hey, the stimulus was too small.” They still send Axelrod around saying “No one could have predicted.” Fuck that. Everyone who’s worth reading predicted.
Not just gullible but unaware how govt works and incurious to figure it out. DoD cuts wouldn’t hurt my feelings as long as the medical research programs aren’t touched. Most people don’t have a clue how much they are helped through these programs.
It was the bank bailout. People feel that the government impoverished itself (and them) to save the super-wealthy bankers. Rightly or Wrongly, this is what they feel and where Obama lost them.
I hear this constantly, from Black and White, from Left and Right. I think he still has the Hispanics and Asians. They never expected much besides big talk and corruption. I suppose that reflects the politics in their home countries.
If they went to their ATM one morning in the spring of ’09, and nothing happened, they’d hate Obama then, too.
Either way, they’re going to hate Obama. And that’s just the blind or colorblind ones.
Some hands lose, no matter how well played.
No, it’s not just color. I’m hearing this from black people too. And the ones who actually participated in the campaign, spending their time going from door to door, are the angriest.
What’s puzzling to me is why the Obama administration has chosen to stay silent about the fact that TARP ended up costing much less money than feared.
I don’t think they’ve been silent about it at all.
People remember the banksters got bonuses bigger than the total income they and their children and their grandchildren will ever earn in their lives.
Envy? Maybe. But they are mad.
Alaska Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller received federal farm subsidies for land that the fiscal conservative owned in Kansas in the 1990s. Perhaps this is why he was ‘successful’ in business? Free money from the gov’t for a ‘farm’ in Kansas?
He’s left his parents financially crippled, requiring social security and other federal programs to make ends meet. In his own words.
The guy is a WELFARE QUEEN. I will be referring to him as “GOP Welfare Queen Joe Miller” from now on. So should you.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39293407/ns/politics/
Cutting the deficit does not mean cutting spending exclusively. And it does not necessarily involve Congress. The executive branch can do a lot to cut spending within each agency without necessarily letting people go. In fact, the most recent budget report showed that the government might end the year having cut $200 billion from the deficit, some from DoD.
The deficit issue is a political football, and I hope the public response to the catfood commission shuts up the deficit peacocks.
The public is pretty clear that allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse is good policy for decreasing the deficit. What Congress should be working on is an Obama tax cut for the middle class that reframes the issue as a new tax cut. And someone should remind people that the Bush tax cuts were passed by Republicans through reconciliation. And that the reconciliation rule requires the sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts. That takes a big hunk out of the deficit.
What the public is not clear on is the fact that a big part of the deficit is coming from the loss of revenue resulting from widespread unemployment. And that a more rapid and effective dealing with the economy — not letting unemployment work its way out in 5 to 10 years as predicted, but dealing with ending it in 18 months — would eliminate the next biggest chunk of the deficit. And this is the part of the deficit that could be closed with a $1 trillion infrastructure maintenance program over three years.
The third piece is the expect increase in provider costs for Medicare as more people qualify for Medicare. Effective control of provider costs and not allowing opt-out by providers from providing care to Medicare patients would help here. However, the providers have a death grip on Congress — thus the kicking the can on the Medicare fix down the road.
Defense expenditures is the fourth piece of the puzzle. From a policy standpoint, there should be a requirement that actions in Iraq and Afghanistan be on-budget and be offset by other savings in the defense budget, such as cancellation of boondoggle procurement projects and reducing the intelligence community to a size in which they actually can pass on and validate information. Right now, there is too much unnecessary dragnet information being gathered, too much devotion of intelligence resources to political posturing and identification of peaceful dissenters, and too much CYA secrecy. What should not be cut is the pay and benefits to the troops. The DoD brass typically plans cuts in personnel costs in order to wave off Congressional reduction of their total budget.
Another possible source of revenue is a tax on interest revenue of interest rates over 12% annual percentage rate. First 12% at normal rates. Portion above 12% taxed at 40%.
I posted this a week ago at Liberty Street:
Maybe I am unnecessarily gloomy. I really do hope so. But the `arc’ is not bending towards justice but towards a two-tiered society. Five percent very wealthy and 95% poor.
It is too late. Maybe if the Brooks Bros people hadn’t stormed the doors and the Florida recount had gone on with a Gore victory, things might be different.
Maybe.
But I doubt it. The take-over of our political system by the large corporations is well past the tipping point.
Did it start 50 years ago as that great wasteland, network television, became uber-popular or with the “Reagan Revolution” I do not know. But we, as a nation, have been going downhill for a long time.
Obama has been too timid and the folks he hired (Geithner, Summers, Holder et al) are owned by the corporate power structure.
It is too late to change whatever needs changing (SCOTUS – Citizens United), so I just hope they don’t mess up my Social Security as long as I’m alive.