An April 6 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 61% of people favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, down from 71% in 1995. Support falls to 27% when people are told that this would require a 20% cut in entitlement programs. An April 4 YouGov poll found that an overwhelming majority of people favor large budget cuts. However, majorities also favor increased spending for education and medical research, and a strong plurality favor increased spending on clean energy technology. An April 1 CNN/Opinion Research poll examined peoplesâ knowledge of how the federal government spends its money. It finds that most really have no idea what percentage of the budget goes to various programs. A March 31 Pew poll asked people which among these programs the federal government spent the most on: Medicare, education, scientific research, or interest on the debt. Only 29% of people correctly said Medicare, 7% said education, 7% said scientific research, and 36% said interest. On March 9, the Harris poll found strong opposition to cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits to deal with the budgetary problems of those programs. People are also opposed to raising taxes to fund them. On March 2, a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found strong opposition to cutting spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, K-12 education, heating assistance for the poor, college student loans, Head Start, and unemployment insurance. There was majority support only for cutting nuclear power subsidies, aid to state and local governments, the EPA budget, and spending on transportation and infrastructure projects. The poll also found that 81% of people would support a surtax on millionaires to help reduce the budget deficit, and 68% would support eliminating the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000. On March 1, the Tarrance Group issued a poll which found that 63% of voters incorrectly believe that the federal government spends more on national defense and foreign aid than it does on Medicare and Social Security. Also, three-fifths of voters believe that the budget can be fixed just by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.
Maybe true, but we jumped that shark a long time ago and they ain't no going back. IMO, one of the main reason health care costs are out of control was the inception of Medicare/Medicaid. No doubt other factors exist. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/understanding_the_cause_of_hea.html Seneca
While you're almost certainly correct. A sudden burst of electorate integrity and self reliance mentality along with some patriotic statesmen with the backbone to make necessary choices without regard for their political future could save us. Not that I see that happening or anything. Agreed and at least one of those other factors is the high cost of college/medical school also in part brought about by government education subsidies. Hmmm, seems almost every time the feds get involved there is a chain reaction of unintended consequences. Implying one solution would be for the feds to stop being so intrusive into every aspect of our lives since they only fuck things up to begin with.
That is exactly right. I said in 2008 that without that bullshit pledge to "save the education lending market", we would have seen real quickly just what a college education is "worth". i.e. without the government and its easy lending student loan market, the cost of many of these colleges would have been cut in half, in a heartbeat. All the dead weight tenured professors pontificating on classical literature would be walking the streets. On a related note, I read a comment in a thread that gave me a "LOL" moment a few weeks back. He said that "eliminating medicare fraud would probably knock 20% off our GDP". Really, this entire edifice is just built upon many layers of cronyism and accepted fraud so as to continue the debt and spending status quo.