{"id":9880,"date":"2010-04-08T00:32:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T07:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9880"},"modified":"2010-04-08T00:32:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T07:32:54","slug":"cutting-government-spending-is-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9880","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Government Spending Is Tyranny!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Economist<\/a> polled Americans about the deficit, government spending, and the like. Overwhelmingly, Americans prefer cutting government spending in order to balance the deficit (62%), compared to only 5% for raising taxes and 24% who favored doing both.<\/p>\n

But there’s a big difference between general and specifics. According to this poll, only 5% favor raising taxes, but 62%<\/strike> 59% favor raising taxes on households making over $250,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the huge majority in favor of cutting government programs dissolves once Americans were asked which programs should have funding cut:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So a strong majority agrees on cutting foreign aid — but, alas, foreign aid makes up less than 1% of the federal budget. That’s like cutting the household grocery bill by cutting out half a candy bar every other month.<\/p>\n

Conservatives favor cutting government programs to balance the deficit. But (and this is the conundrum part) conservatives also claim that for Congress to make policy that most Americans disagree <\/a>with is<\/a> virtually<\/a> tyranny<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since passing any policy that doesn’t poll well is tyranny — and cutting (say) Social Security polls far less <\/em>well than the Affordable Care Act — what deficit-cutting measures can <\/em>conservatives favor?<\/p>\n

Other than raising taxes on households with incomes over $250,000, that is.<\/p>\n

(Hat tip: Mr Drum<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Update: This graph from Annie Lowrey<\/a> plots both what Americans say should be cut, and what percentage of the federal budget is spent in each area.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Economist polled Americans about the deficit, government spending, and the like. Overwhelmingly, Americans prefer cutting government spending in order to balance the deficit (62%), compared to only 5% for raising taxes and 24% who favored doing both. But there’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}