{"id":520567,"date":"2010-04-08T12:52:52","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T16:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=81684"},"modified":"2010-04-08T12:52:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T16:52:52","slug":"the-futility-of-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/520567","title":{"rendered":"The Futility of Budget Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, an <em>Economist<\/em>\/YouGov <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/democracyinamerica\/2010\/04\/economistyougov_polling\">poll<\/a> making the rounds shows that Americans would vastly prefer budget cuts to new taxes &#8212; by 62 percent to 5 percent. The poll goes on to ask Americans which government spending programs they would choose to cut: &#8220;If government spending is reduced in order to balance the budget, which of the following government programs should receive lower federal funding than they currently do?&#8221; (Respondents could pick more than one thing to axe.)<\/p>\n<p>Here is how they responded:<span id=\"more-81684\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-81687\" href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/81684\/the-futility-of-budget-cuts\/cuts\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-81687 alignnone\" title=\"Cuts\" src=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Cuts.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"441\" height=\"365\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The most expendable programs, according to poll takers, were mass transit, housing, agriculture, environment and foreign aid, the runaway winner at 71 percent.\u00a0The problem? These programs together barely comprise 3 percent of the federal budget. Even if the programs were entirely eliminated, the cuts would do nothing to solve the United States&#8217; long-term entitlement program. \u00a0Indeed, the responses had no obvious correlation with spending size.<\/p>\n<p>The red bars in this graph indicate expenditures in the various areas:<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-81688\" href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/81684\/the-futility-of-budget-cuts\/vspending\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-81688 alignnone\" title=\"VSpending\" src=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/VSpending.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"432\" height=\"331\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The poll highlights the conundrum: Americans want to solve the long-term deficit program and want the federal government to run a balanced budget. They are willing to make budget cuts.\u00a0But the government cannot cut enough from discretionary programs to bring the budget into check and ultimately to reduce the deficit. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracycorps.com\/strategy\/2010\/03\/mixed-messages-on-the-deficit\/?section=Analysis\">Half<\/a> of Americans still believe the government can.) Entitlement programs &#8212; Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security &#8212; are at the heart of the problem, with spending growth in health care programs the single biggest culprit. The lone solution &#8212; save for politically improbable radical spending cuts to defense, health care programs and social security &#8212; is tax hikes.\u00a0Most economists agree on the point, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/04\/07\/AR2010040703116.html?hpid=sec-business\">reiterated<\/a> strongly by Fed Chair\u00a0Ben Bernanke in a speech yesterday. But the promise of tax increases is hardly a savvy campaign platform, and it will be up to members of Congress to sell the necessity and prudence of tax hikes to an economically distressed citizenry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, an Economist\/YouGov poll making the rounds shows that Americans would vastly prefer budget cuts to new taxes &#8212; by 62 percent to 5 percent. The poll goes on to ask Americans which government spending programs they would choose to cut: &#8220;If government spending is reduced in order to balance the budget, which of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}