Republicans who won so many House seats in the last election seem to take it for granted that they have achieved a consensus among Americans that slashing domestic spending and entitlements is everyone’s top priority. Certainly their fierce rhetoric about cutting spending to reduce federal budget deficits and the cumulative $14 trillion national debt — more than $12 trillion of which was handed to President Obama by his predecessors when he took office — conveys that idea.
But that seems to be wrong. A new New York Times/CBS News poll, for example, shows that just 41 percent of Americans believe it will be necessary to tax people like themselves. An even lower proportion of Americans, 39 percent, believe it will be necessary to cut government programs that benefit themselves.
Though predictable, this finding suggests a huge problem for both parties, but particularly for Republicans, who are now proposing to make $2.5 trillion in mostly unspecified cuts in spending over the next decade. That’s because virtually every expert analyst, panel and commission that has studied the nation’s haunting debt has concluded that it would take a combination of both significant cuts in entitlement spending — specifically Medicare and Social Security — and higher taxes to make serious progress on debt and spending reductions.
That’s not the only problem that confronts the brash Republican House majority that now wants to drive the train on cutbacks despite the weak economy. This group, or more specifically, the 80 percent who claim to be the party’s hard-core conservatives, wants to achieve its $2.5 trillion cuts without touching the gigantic military budget. The poll shows that’s not what’s wanted or expected by “the American people” whose number the Republicans claim to have.
Given a choice between cutting, if necessary, spending on Medicare, Social Security and the military, 55 percent of all respondents said cut the military. Just 13 percent said cut Social Security, and only 21 percent said to cut Medicare.