While Republicans are scrambling to find ways to gut non-defense discretionary spending, here’s what people really want to cut:
The poll that produced that graphic doesn’t ask about raising taxes on the rich, but if Democrats actually fought for cutting the defense budget and raising taxes on the top few percent, Washington, DC could still have a Metro, the federal government could still pay for birth control, and poor people could still have public defenders.
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duck-billed placelot
Don’t be silly, that’s a sensible and responsible solution that would result in the IMMEDIATE EMASCULATION OF AMERICA.
cleek
people only support cutting the military in the abstract.
specific proposals are demagogued.
cat48
The money is in SocSec and Medicare which will be/are going to have shortfalls and explode the deficit in the future, so “they” say.
Anyway, the NYT asked what to do about shortfalls which was interesting:
40. (ASKED OF HALF SAMPLE)If you HAD to choose ONE, which of the following changes to Medicare benefits would you prefer in order to reduce the federal budget deficit: 1. raising the age people start receiving Medicare benefits, OR 2. raising the premiums all Medicare recipients have to pay, OR 3. covering fewer treatments? Raise age 46 Raise premiums 26 Cover fewer treatments 16 DK/NA 11
cathyx
But if we cut defense, the terrorists will win. Then all american women will have to wear burkas and I wouldn’t like that on a hot day.
duck-billed placelot
@cathyx – if all american women have to wear burkas, american men will be IMMEDIATELY EMASCULATED. How will the American Penis know its true worth if there are no women-in-tight-clothes-and-dead-afghanis by which to measure it?
MikeJ
@cleek: In Seattle people are all for cutting any part of the military except airplanes. I’d guess in Bath, Maine they’re all for cutting anything except ships.
cat48
Oh, also, Gates & Obama are attempting to cut $100B in Defense spending this budget and the House & Senate refuse to do it. I expected that from the House, but a lot of Dems in the Senate are against cutting the projects/equipment/programs, too. I doubt there will be any fighting abt this unless they refuse to raise the debt ceiling. This will probably be Obama’s “compromise.”
Ija
What, no option for cutting foreign aide? That graph is liberally biased. Doesn’t the NYT know that foreign aide is the biggest cash cow sucking on our collective teats?
I’m interested in that 14% of Republicans who wants to cut Medicare but not Social Security. It’s okay if old people don’t have health insurance as long as they have that check from SS coming in every month. That’s totally enough to pay for that hospital bill when you break you hip.
bemused
According to Michael Medved on the Ed Schultz show last night, paraphrasing, americans are more concerned with the deficit, fiscal restraints than jobs and that’s what the republicans will be focusing on.
MM: There’s not going to be a jobs plan from the Republicans. It’s not the House majority’s job to bring a jobs plan to the table.
Joe Madison: America, are you hearing this?!
MM:It’s not the government’s job to create jobs. The government’s job to to get out of the way for the private sector to do what they do best.
duck-billed placelot
@cleek – isn’t that true for all the cuts? I mean, you know demagoguery is going to happen for the actual proposals; Democrats won’t just sit by while Republicans offload federal land at rock-bottom prices or slash all NEA funding, right?…right?
Ija
@bemused:
Oh yeah? Then why have they been blaming Obama for the high unemployment rate?
Steeplejack
@bemused:
Too bad he didn’t have enough time to explain exactly how the government has been “in the way” as the job market has cratered over the last five years or so. Absent that, he’d have to explain how and why the private sector hasn’t been getting the job done on “what they do best.”
comrade scott's agenda of rage
That’s what Repups want to kill, they look at such outcomes as a feature, not a bug.
chopper
@Steeplejack:
all i know is, all the private sector has done in the last 2 years is crash america’s economy into a ditch.
bemused
@Ija:
That’s how they roll.
Medved also said that the Republicans would listen to what the Obama says in the SOTU and will respond to that.
I think this is exactly what will happen. No jobs plan from GOP. ‘Hell no, that’s not our job. Bring your plan on, Obama, and we get to eviscerate it’.
I was somewhat shocked that Medved straight out said there was going to be no jobs plan from the Republicans. Considering that the GOP and their media support system usually have their talking points coordinated, are we going to be hearing variations of the same ‘not our job to bring a jobs plan’ from R legislators? If so, are the unemployed republican saps going to finally notice that republicans are salivating to cut their SS and Medicare and don’t give a rats ass about jobs for them?
Southern Beale
Here in Tennessee, now under complete Republican control (and our Republicans are major wackadoodles), the legislature is planning to do away with the Hall Tax, a 6% tax on dividend and investment income. Naturally it’s primarily a rich person’s tax, it’s the state’s ONLY income tax, and of course the rich assholes now in charge are eager to get rid of it.
What’s hilarious is that they claim it will be paid for by making the state a haven for senior citizens and somehow their spending will trickle down on the rest of us. I’m dubious that the fixed-income, Senior Discount all-you-can-eat-buffet crowd will generate $186 million in income but I think it’s hilarious they are making that argument.
cleek
@Ija:
because they’re Republicans.
Ija
@bemused:
Nope, because of the three G’s. That’s more important to them. After all, god will provide for you and your family and guns will keep you save from the evil horde of gays roaming the countryside trying to turn your son into one of them. What more do you need in life, really? You’re covered.
Punchy
Everyone wants the military spending slashed until it’s their community’s B-Whatever C-kret Bomah gets cut. Then suddenly, military cuts are wrong.
Pretty much the textbook example of NIMBY.
RinaX
Republicans who fought tooth and nail against a state aid package last year now want to help states out. By letting them declare bankruptcy which, coincidentally, would also wipe out the pension of state workers…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41188877/ns/business-the_new_york_times/
Chris
It’s incredible that even among Republicans, a plurality thinks the military is what should be cut. Hell of a message to send to the political class.
daveNYC
Oh yeah, a haircut on state and muni bonds. I can’t see anything bad happening because of that.
Kirk Spencer
@RinaX: Oh, good, we’ve got more people who have no clue of what they’re speaking.
The term for a state declaring bankruptcy is “sovereign default”, and it’s been done in the past in the United States.
I believe you when you’re saying they want to remove the pensions, mind you. It’s just the claim that there is no route for states to declare bankruptcy is completely wrong.
sparky
the post is kinda misleading because it doesn’t consider all of the findings related to these issues. here are two more “findings” from the same poll:
If you had to choose one, which would you prefer — raising taxes on people like you or reducing spending on government programs that benefit people like you?
reducing spending was the preferred answer for independents, Rs AND Ds.
In order to reduce the federal budget deficit, do you think it will be necessary or not necessary to increase taxes on people like you?
again, all groups chose the “not necessary” option.
what, if anything can be drawn from this morass? two things, perhaps: (1) as usual, if you are not directly affected you don’t care if spending is cut, so as a stratergy [sic] it is highly effective for the Rs to dismantle programs individually.
second, a bit of good news:the general public apparently still believes in the notion of progressive taxation. thus, what might be a more effective strategy might be to reinforce that idea rather than fight battles on specifics.once the underpinning rationale has been destroyed it is much easier to destroy the actual program because if redistribution is destroyed as a concept then the other, selfishness, must necessarily have the upper hand.
flaming attraction ps: it also gives the lie to the notion that Obama did anything else but cave to the oligarchs when he embraced continuing the Bush tax cuts. why? because a majority of voters believe in progressive taxation, so when the sides are the general public v. the oligarchy, the latter always wins, at least in an Obama administration (it should go without saying that this would be true of a McCain admin, and was true under Jr as well).
sparky
note to big bosses here: no permission to edit :(
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Actually, the private sector is making a decent comeback. What’s dragging the economy down right now is the layoffs of government workers like teachers, cops and firefighters. There just aren’t enough private-sector jobs to absorb them all, not to mention the costs associated with cutting services so drastically.
Of course, as far as Republicans are concerned, that’s unpossible since apparently teachers, cops and firefighters don’t buy food or clothing or other consumer goods that make the economy run.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
I imagine public sector wage freezes aren’t helping on that front either.
Lee
@Kirk Spencer:
Actually the article states
Bill Murray
@Mnemosyne: 763,000 private sector jobs in a year is not really a decent comeback, although it is better than the what ~8.5 million jobs lost total in the previous two years. 763,000 covers about half a year’s worth of new entrants to the job force
Mike in NC
An actual GOP jobs program? Surely you jest. I read that Boehner’s next priority is redundant legislation to prevent any federal funding for abortion services, because that’s what “the American people” have demanded.
El Cid
Democrats always get blamed for what Republicans do. Including when the policies in question are the correct policies.
George Bush Sr. followed his own Secretary of Defense’s recommandation to phase out old and unnecessary bases and consolidating other units and cutting down recruitment in certain services at certain times.
There were other commission recommendations in 1991, 1993, and 1995.
So, of course, Bill Clinton got blamed for “hollowing out the military”.
If we begin cutting defense spending, it would take a PR miracle to not have Democrats be blamed for inviting Al Qa’ida to kill babies by beating them to death with puppies.
jayjaybear
Re Michael Medved: I liked him a lot better when he was a movie reviewer and not a pundit. Of course, I didn’t like him much even then, but I liked him a lot better than I do now.
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid: That ‘hollow army’ went through Iraq like a dose of salts in ’03, didn’t it?
Davis X. Machina
No. We’ve reached the Saipan Banzai Cliffs/Masada stage of the cold Civil War. They’ll sacrifice their own children to the Cause at this point.
Deus lo vult and all that.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: That’s because Bush Jr. fixed it. Just ask Republicans.
Davis X. Machina
@El Cid: In 18 months. I remember — it was a miracle.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Davis X. Machina:
Agreed.
Can we find a domestic analogy that will fit on a bumper sticker and which most Americans would instantly recognize? I would propose: “GOP = The Donner Party, and YOU are on the menu”, but the teaching of American history has been in such a shambles for so long that I doubt if even one person in ten would get the reference.
Anybody got any better ideas?
joe from Lowell
@Ija:
There’s actually some sense there, in that Medicare has a real, large, oncoming budget problem, and Social Security does not.
I think it’s possible that 1/7 of Republicans are making up their minds based on actual facts.
NR
You seem to be assuming that the Democrats want to do these things. They don’t.
Davis X. Machina
@ThatLeftTurnInAB
Too long. ‘God gays, guns’ is only eleven letters long, and there are 70 million Americans whose brains fill up just with that.
joe from Lowell
@Bill Murray:
297,000 private-sector jobs just in December, on the other hand, is a great comeback. Here’s hoping it keeps up.
And, of course, that result could not have possible except as the culmination of the trend Mnemosyne was pointing out in that chart.
Oscar Leroy
@Bill Murray:
That’s for sure. 700,000 jobs a year doesn’t even cover new people entering the workforce. It sure isn’t enough to dig out of this depression.
So if Obama proposes cutting Social Security so he can keep raising defense spending, who are we going to blame for that? Let’s start getting our story straight now, so it’s ready to go next week.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Murray:
It’s better than the massive layoffs in the public sector, and the number would almost certainly be better if not for those layoffs.
But it’s an article of faith for Republicans that Government Is Bad so they don’t actually care that they’re damaging the overall economy by getting rid of public workers. They don’t care that there’s no way that the private sector is going to be able to recover as long as people are being laid off. It’s more important to them that they kill as many government jobs as possible than it is to fix the economy.
Or, what Davis X. Machina said.
joe from Lowell
@Oscar Leroy:
The Obama administration just submitted $100 billion in annual cuts to the defense budget a week ago.
Please note, this is actual, documented fact, as opposed to something that you’ve decided is true by checking it against your gut, so I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it.
Mnemosyne
@Oscar Leroy:
I see Oscar has bought a ticket on the “He’s Going To Kill Social Security in the State of the Union!” crazy train.
Tell you what, Oscar — I’ll think of something to say if that actually does happen (as pigs do a flyover of the Capitol Building) if you can let us know what the next big event is where Obama Is Totally Going To Kill Social Security This Time, No, I Swear I’m Right This Time!
You’re sounding like one of those apocalyptic cults that keeps having to push back the date for Armageddon because — surprise! — it was never going to happen.
Bill Murray
@joe from Lowell: I think it’s more likely 1 in 7 confused Medicare with Medicaid
Tax Analyst
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
No, if you tell people there’s a “Donner Party” they’re going to think they’re going to get free eats and booze from the Republicans. Either that or they’re going to be expecting Quaaludes.