As President Obama released his 2012 budget this week, the ongoing federal deficit debate has turned from electoral rhetoric to governing reality. Both Republican leadership in the House and President Obama have publicly discussed the need to examine cuts in defense and entitlement funding, but neither one have made a meaningful opening gambit. This month, a CBS poll finds that the American public is evenly split on who they trust more, Obama or House Republicans, when it come to making the right decisions about reducing the deficit. Each side holds the trust of 42 percent of Americans. This is consistent from last month, where AP-Gfk found 41 percent trusted each party.
For Republicans, public confidence in handling the deficit has fallen since last fall, when they were regularly trusted more than Democrats by roughly 7 points. Gallup’s polling shows the public’s approval of how Obama is handling the budget deficit has also fallen, from 49 percent approval in March of 2009 to 27 percent this month.
The federal deficit is of increasing concern to Americans. In Pew’s poll, 64 percent of Americans rank “reducing the budget deficit” as a top priority this January, whereas only 35 percent did so in January of 2002. The last time the budget deficit was a top priority for nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans was in December of 1994, on the heels of the Contract with America and right before the only years of budget surpluses in modern history. In December 2010, the Wall Street Journal found a slim majority, 51 to 45, think the deficit needs to be addressed now as opposed to waiting until the economy improves. Though a large majority of Americans view the deficit as a top priority and a majority wants it addressed now, the public is sending mixed signals on how exactly they would address the national balance sheet.
In January 2011, CBS found Americans overwhelming prefer spending cuts (77%) over tax increases (9%) to reduce the deficit. When the Wall Street Journal offered the option in December, 19 percent were comfortable with letting the deficit increase. But in the same CBS poll where 77 percent favored spending cuts, only 38 percent of Americans answered “Yes” when asked if there was a specific program they would cut. While 86 percent of Americans prefer lowering the debt through spending cuts or a combination of cuts and tax raises, 35 percent in another question responded there was no program they would cut and 27 percent did not know what they would cut. When the responses of the two questions are combined, one can infer that twenty-one percent of Americans who prefer cuts in some fashion don’t want to cut anything! In this respect, politicians are representing their constituencies pretty well.
When asked about specific programs, Americans are reluctant to cut funding in most areas. The only popular cut is to the foreign aid budget. Education, Social Security, and Medicare are at the bottom of everyone’s list of acceptable cuts, and a majority of Americans from both parties oppose any cuts to education or Social Security according to Kaiser. When CBS pressed the issue in January and asks if people would rather raise taxes or reduce benefits to bring down the cost of Medicare, 64 percent favored raising taxes while 24 percent favored a reduction in benefits. The numbers for Social Security are almost exactly the same (63 and 25 percent).
Defense spending, a significant portion of the budget, is receiving increased scrutiny as the deficit is looming larger every year. Support for cutting defense spending hovers between 40 and 50 percent depending on the poll. When Kaiser breaks down this question by party, 52 percent of Republicans oppose any cuts while only a third of Independents and Democrats oppose any cuts. When Harris compared the favorability of cutting spending on twenty different programs in 1980 and again in 2011, defense spending was the only category where people are more willing to cut spending today than thirty years ago (34 to 41 percent). When CBS and the New York Times asked how they would reduce defense spending, 55 percent of Americans said they would reduce the number of American troops stationed in Europe and Asia and only 7 percent would reduce the size of military branches.
When spending cuts and tax increases directly affect those asked, respondents were slightly more tepid in their enthusiasm. CBS finds a plurality (49%) of Americans agree that “it will be necessary to cut programs that benefit people like [themselves] to lower the deficit” (as opposed to 77% who favored general spending cuts), but only 37 percent think it will be necessary to raise taxes on people like them to lower the deficit. Overall, spending cuts seem slightly more tenable than tax increases to Americans when directly affected.
There is no clear public opinion mandate for politicians to act upon when tackling the deficit. Even though most Americans favor cutting spending, programs that cost the most are the most popular. At the state level, governors are already making cuts and some retain popular support in the face of drastic spending reductions. At the national level, politicians will have to take unpopular actions to make a meaningful impact on reducing the deficit.
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