A new AP/NORC poll includes one of our favorite questions: Which government programs do we spend too much on? Here are the results:
The only program that a majority wants to cut back is good ol' foreign aid, which now has a thousand-year streak of being disliked even though it accounts for—let's see here—0.9% of the federal budget and 0.18% of GDP, one of the lowest levels among rich countries.
We'll probably never get people's heads out of the sand on this one, but that's OK. All we have to do is cut off assistance to Israel and foreign aid spending will immediately be cut by 10%. Easy peasy.
But now let's look at things from the other direction. What programs do people want to spend more on?
My rule of thumb is that poll numbers for things like this need to be at least above 60% to be meaningful, and there are only a handful of programs that—barely—break that barrier. We've already passed a big infrastructure bill, which leaves only Social Security, health care, and education as popular candidates for more spending.
Overall, the primary message of this poll, and others like it, is that status quo bias is strong. The American public has consistently said that:
- They don't want to cut anything serious and are willing to increase spending a bit for only a few things.
- They don't like big deficits.
- They want to close the deficit by increasing taxes on rich people.
This is one of the reasons politics is so ugly these days. As the old saying goes, the smaller the stakes the nastier the fight.
Politics are ugly because one side of the map has decided that honesty and democracy, which were regarded scommon essentials, are political positions that they don't hold.
The only thing that ever makes peoples' lives more difficult is voting for conservatives.
We won't have to spend more on healthcare if we nationalize it, we spend enough on it now to cover that.
"We won't have to spend more on healthcare if we nationalize it, we spend enough on it now to cover that."
Absolutely, totally correct. But we don't need to nationalize healthcare. It is easier and better just to nationalize health insurance.
I agree with the first sentence too.
Ah yes, foreign aid ... I seem to recall the average American thinking that it is 15% of the federal budget.
I get this from right wing relatives. They think that foreign aid is the dominant part of the budget.
I also had a fuzzy memory of 25%, and I see that according to Brookings a few years ago, "Opinion polls consistently report that Americans believe foreign aid is in the range of 25 percent of the federal budget. When asked how much it should be, they say about 10 percent."
And a lot of the "foreign aid" is paying American companies for stuff to send out, i.e. the money stays here.
and Joel pointed this out below
(the power of editing!)
If overseas military bases count as "foreign aid," maybe. And maybe they should.
Small stakes? If you were making billions a year how would you like to get 50% less? That is less than the difference between current marginal rates and those of 1964, or during the good old days of the Eisenhower administration which Republicans want to go back to.
There's big money involved for the people who matter.
Politics is so ugly these days because of the margin between what a significant proportion of the citizens want and what the war complex wants. Thus the emphasis on so many emotional issues, whether liberal or conservative; Republican or Democratic, with which to split the electorate with partisan divisions and continue the transfer of wealth from wage earners to the special interests.
can't remember who first said this but it is pretty accurate I think:
What voters seem to want is Democratic policies implemented by Republicans
And of course, most foreign aid is conditioned on spending it with US suppliers, so it really is just subsidizing the US economy with taxpayer dollars.
Is Israel's aid classed under foreign aid or military? I would support ending it entirely but it may be split under a different item.
I have to wonder how “tax breaks for the wealthy” or something more specific like “building a new sports arena” would poll