A new McClatchy-Marist Poll shows a clear majority of Americans wants policymakers to reach a bipartisan deal on debt reduction, and supports higher taxes on income above $250,000.
But after these basic truths, the consensus shifts in the other direction -- Americans oppose letting all Bush-era rates expire, oppose ending the payroll tax break, oppose cutting social insurance programs for the elderly, and oppose raising the Medicare eligibility age. Indeed, perhaps the most striking result is the fact that self-identified Republicans oppose debt-reduction measures -- including spending cuts.
GOP voters also, of course, oppose any kind of tax increase on anyone at any income level.
Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said that when it comes to Republican voters and every debt-reduction idea, "There's opposition to everything.... If you're a Republican in Congress looking for what Republican voters are telling you, they're not telling you much."
Leave a Comment:
when have repubs ever listened to what voters (democratic or repub) want? this is all about keeping President Obama in his place.
a cleverly worded poll would show that repukes oppose anything Obama suggests, regardless of their supporting it in a previous question sans Obama's support.
Well that would help explain the "keep your government out of my Medicare" signs...
"We wish to have our cake and eat it too," demand the Republican masses.
I would have loved to have seen what the reaction would have been to a question about military spending cuts.
Guess they wouldn't be for cutting military/Pentagon type spending either.
Look around...is the world safe enough to cut military spending?
Yeah, every single dollar of the trillions spent in the past decade was absolutely necessary to KEEP US SAFE! There can never ever ever be too many handouts to the military contractors -- just too little.
Let old people die w/o insurance, fine. But scary guys in caves around the world? Unleash the spigots of money!!!
We still have occupation forces in England, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and other places. World War 2 has been over for decades. It's time to bring our men and women home.
At most of these places..they HAVE come home. The Military has cut, handed over bases and territory in former cold war spots. but..to meet today's threats...you NEED jumping off points as well as places that are in positions to be used in time of need against international threat. And How much is an American soldier's life..who VOLUNTEERED to serve his country in dangerous places worth? Not much if you look to the Ambassador and staff in Benghazi...apparently.
Scott - In my humble opinion, we could close and sell off every golf course on every military base, both here and abroad, without impacting the effectiveness of our troops. I also suspect that the 700+ military bases that we still have on foreign soil could be trimmed.
Defense is important, but the way the Pentagon has run for the past few decades, we most certainly have not gotten the right "bang for the buck", so to speak. If any other government program had the same cost overruns, schedule slips, low quality, corruption and lack of accountability as the Defense Department, repubs would have been screaming to shut it down decades ago. Need proof? How about the F-22, which has been trying to kill its pilots with a defective life support system that the contractor has yet to diagnose, so that the Air Force is now keeping them on flights near a base so the pilot can land quickly if the plane tries to kill him? Unfortunately, even those measures failed a few weeks ago in FL. Even when the plane isn't acting homicidal, it is unable to play nicely with other planes in our arsenal, such as the F-16, because its systems will only talk to other F-22s. Or how about the F-35, over budget and behind schedule like the F-22, and whose carrier version cannot currently land on carriers because the designers put the tailhook in a position that often misses the arresting wire? Because of the aircraft's design, moving the tailhook to a better location will apparently be very difficult, (i.e. expensive and time-consuming). The Navy is still trying to pretend that the LCS-1 Littoral Combat Ship is fine and dandy, even though it has a huge laundry list of severe deficiencies, including docking bay doors that leak so badly that everything in that area of the ship is corroding, and has already cost the ship one set of expensive engines. This is just a quick list of recent failures and expensive screwups that we taxpayers have to accept as "the cost of freedom". Defense contractors are some of the biggest scam artists in the history of this country. If they were selling consumer products, no one would touch their overpriced defective wares with a ten-foot pole. Start by making cuts in defense, and changes in how weapons are procured, as well as increasing the number of auditors and inspectors. If you can't come up with at least $75 billion in savings a year in Pentagon graft and inefficiency, you obviously aren't looking hard enough.
Like everything Republicans seem to stand for it needs to be done AutoMagically.
Can we get a simple pie chart showing that white men are only 25% of the U.S. population and that the old white republican guys are just the crusty part?
How about just saying "Those evil WORKING white guy's" that way you would have it ALL in one sentence.
Your right they are evil.
The truth as seen by La Raza.....
@scott
What does La Raza have to do with this?!
And I'm still waiting for your explanation when you referred to the POTUS as K-I-C.
I've flagged this comment as inflammatory and I strongly recommend others to do the same.
The K-I-C refers to the "Kenyan In Chief" as he stated he was from Kenya in the biography on his father. You know...the Born in Kenya, raised in Hawaii part? So flag away you sensitive liberal you.
He didn't say he was born in Kenya in his biography. He said his father was born in Kenya.
This isn't news, but it reinforces the notion that Republican politicians are doing what they were hired to do. People could have voted against them. Maybe they did, but perhaps there were too few to defeat them. Regardless, they need an easier way to participate between elections, and a way hold politicians accountable for implementing solutions that benefit all of us. www.at10us.com
The people did vote against them. But the way they had gerrymandered the districts to pack and crack that about 50% Dem vote was turned into vast Repub House majority. Look at just about any state and see the problem. In PA for example, about 50-50 R-D yet MOST of the districts got an R for their Rep.
If we had simple proportional representation, the House would be a far different place.
Hardly surprising I suppose, given the sources from which the Republican voters typically draw their information. If the information upon which they are basing their judgements is absent any real reflection on objective truth or verifiable factual data, how the heck are they supposed to draw reasoned conclusions? So yeah, keep my taxes low and fix that deficit business but don't be cuttin' nothin'. Uh huh. Makes perfect sense to me.
They think it is all waste, fraud, and abuse. They think that if we fix that, then we cure our budget troubles. That and PBS and Planned Parenthood.
We need to make sure we have a full blown campaign waged for 2014! It's time to put an end to this. They want to create deficit and live free!---at someone else's expense!
What a hoot! food stamps unemployment and the welfare rolls ALL at record highs under this COMPLETE failure...a LIBERAL mind you....and REPUBLICANS want to "live free".....what a hoot!!!!
@scott
It's called hypocrisy and it's something that the Republicans are very adept at.
This seems to indicate that Republican voters are uninformed, unrealistic, ill-informed, immature or just plain dumb.
But that leaves out the idea that they are actively trying to bankrupt the federal government and this is the way to do it.
If you can ride "high on the hog" in the meantime with low taxes and large government handouts, why the @!$%# not?
They plan to leave their grandchildren either:
1) The Kingdom Of God (no economy needed); or
2) An Anarchist Utopia (see "Waterworld").
No, it means that Liberals are easily addicted to government programs that have only been around since the inception of "the Great society". The net results of that miserable Social experiment are one parent homes,The prisons full of welfare recipient's and the dropout rate through the roof and the Debt explosion resulting from the massive giveaway. Let's stick to the truth here....shall we?
@scott
Ok, let me get this straight.
We should go back to the days when divorce was illegal so we can reduce the amount of single parent homes.
Go back to debtors prisons so the people in prisons stop receiving welfare (I'm not sure what kind of welfare you seem to think current prisoners receive).
And eliminate the public education system to reduce the dropout rate.
Exactly how much do you think that those actions will reduce our deficits or our national debt?
WHERE were these "Debtor's prisons"? What kind of BS you trying to run out here? And yes, Women SHOULD Marry...new concept,EH? INSTEAD of having multiple Children by multiple fathers that the Government pays for.And Until you kick these parents off the government dole...the Public Education system is GOING TO BE at the mercy of these welfare parent's that are in it for the check and not the child. You cannot fix a child if the parent's are the one's broken. How much would that reduce the deficit? About 42% of the budget....
If you "google" 'debtors prisons us' you'll get plenty of options, here's one from wiki, you can do the rest:
"Women SHOULD Marry." How do you plan to legislate that? I've never been able to have children, would that exempt me? What kind of tests would I have to undergo to not get married. Or would that only apply to women who find themselves pregnant? Should we start calling it a transvaginal wedding instead of a shotgun wedding?
"Public Education system is GOING TO BE at the mercy of these welfare parent's that are in it for the check and not the child." What Federal or State program pays parents to send their children to school? Most states require school attendance up to a certain age, but I'm not aware of any program that pays the parents a direct benefit to send them.
"You cannot fix a child if the parent's are the one's broken." To be fair, for the most part, I agree with that statement.
I'm not sure where you're getting the 42%. Social Security accounts for 20% of the budget, but that's self-funding. Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP account for 21%, but the Medicare portion is also mostly self-funding. Safety Net programing account for 13% and I'm personally fine with that. Education accounts for 2%. I'm of the opinion that since Social Security has been completely self-funded and that the government has been raiding those funds for all of these years to pay for other programs, that defense cuts should come before social security cuts.
Scott, you are representative of the article, in general. You regurgitate the GOP talking points without thinking about how incoherent they are. Give a republican a speaking platform and they will eventually tell the truth. Case in point, your comment wreaks of hateful rhetoric that lacks cognitive thinking. On the one hand you suggest pro life support yet criticize birth control paid by insurance companies rather than the women receiving them. Further, your comment exhibit racism, stealthly, but still obvious. You are misinformed about more than I can explain in this forum but as for as welfare, more whites receive more welfare than non whites. Public education benefits more kids because it serves the majority population...private schools serve the minority populace. Lastly, our deficit is not what it is because of taking care of those in need.....it is because the wealthy is greedy and demostrated same by virtually destroying our economy. Reality is truth, nonreality is not....intelligence and cognitive reasoning reflects the former, not the latter....follow me?
arithmetic
Well, duh! They want to fix the deficit by cutting "Waste, Fraud and Abuse." It's easy, because Waste, Fraud and Abuse is a single line item in the budget of each federal agency (except Defense). It's only evil Democrats who've prevented Republicans from cutting this line item from those budgets, year after year, because, being corrupt and evil, they're in favor of waste, fraud and abuse.
Nah...couldn't be the generational Welfare or the failed social programs that represent 42% of the budget. Get a Clue.
You do realize that your "42%" has been shown to in error and should you continue to use it to justify your "arguments", you will, in effect, be lying?
Oh, wait...
This is largely a legacy of the GOP still preaching voodoo economics. Cut taxes and revenues will rise. No pain required.
And of course the record tax revenues brought in after the implementation of the Bush tax cuts are meaningless?
Scott, two questions:
First, how much revenue was lost due to the Bush tax cuts on income?
Second, you claim that revenue increased after the Bush tax cuts; if so, what was the source of that increase?
Citations, please.
We need more statistics! Obama is already lowering the deficit, and Obamacare should reduce the costs of health care. Surely there are places to cut that leave the middle class alone.
Are they talking about raising the retirement age for everyone, or just people under 55? I know we need to cut some spending (frankly, most people are in denial about this, just sayin) but, really, the GOP wants to tell grandma she can't retire suddenly? That seems pretty harsh.
Bring back the guy who said they should give Obama everything, and see if he really does tank the economy! And what's wrong with our elected officials that they don't want to revisit the Clinton economy? We can't have a growing economy unless a Repub is in charge?
WHAT has the last 4 years been? RECORD highs in welfare and food stamps. The unemployment rate stagnant at best...and HOW do you raise taxes during a recession? How blatantly stupid is THAT when nobody is spending now?
"and HOW do you raise taxes during a recession?"
Right. So we should just forget about the deficit until the recession is over. Let's wait to pay down the debt until good times return.
Actually, if you consider that since Reagan, the SS funds have been tapped to balance a budget in order to keep taxes low, one could argue that cutting the SS benefits of the soon-to-be-retiring boomers really is the only fair thing to do. They voted in record numbers to cut their taxes (allowing the infrastructure their parents' built, crumble) while spending like mad on military build-up and warfare. So tell them: you spent your retirement funds early; guess you should have made smarter choices...?
Now, I, not wanting to just push our grandparents out onto an ice floe and say goodbye, am fine with raising taxes to give them the funds they squandered. That said, I think those who benefited the most from that squandering (maga-corps and the super-rich) should be asked to pay back what they took.
As for waiting to worry about the deficit until the recession is over: damn straight! Austerity now will be crippling.
Don't forget not all debt is the same. Personal debt is the result of living beyond your means or investing on a roof over your head or gambling your money away on wall street or trying to run your own unsuccessful business. National debt is composed of a large chunk from War debts (Iraq, Afghanistan, and other unknown engagements). Other items include, monies for the military- industrial complex, waste, pork barrel projects, and simply the government spending more money than it takes in thru taxation. Since the rich barely contribute to government revenue, the brunt of of the pay back always falls back to the honest tax payer. However, the debt number is never real reflection of it's value, as it is a matter of market speculation and psychological interpretation. Fact is today's Dollar is not worth the same as yesterday or tomorrow worth. Once the dollar was taken off the dollar standard but remained an international payment standard,it's almost immaterial at what level you fix the debt ceiling. Truth be known, America will never be able to repay its debt and no lending country will ask for its money back, as long as America provides the owing countries military help. What, I have not discussed, is infrastructure (power, roads,bridges,water-supply,heat, etc) cost, if they are not paid out of your taxes, where does the money come from. Republicans keep differing these investments in favor of pampering the rich and the military.So it comes down to a matter of balance and priorities. The Dems are for reducing the Pentagon Budget and investing in Infrastructure and Education. The Reps oppose this and are in favor of getting the extra revenue by curtailment of entitlement
You are on to something here...The difference in where the Conservatives come from is that National defense IS in the Constitution whereas this Bloated "Social net" which has so damaged our country....was a Liberal invention of LBJ. NOT in the Constitution.
Scotty, the Founding Fathers were profoundly wary of a standing military, and would be appalled at the military-industrial complex that evolved during the Cold War, and now can't be killed or even brought under control. Even Eisenhower warned us if its dangers. What was the "mission statement", to put it in modern terms, of this country, as the Founding Fathers enumerated it? "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". How much of any of those things can you have with your social darwinism ideas of eliminating the "bloated social net" that you deride? How happy would seniors be without social security and medicare to keep them alive and in a home, instead of dying homeless in the streets of easily treated ailments? How about people who lost their jobs during the recession, either this one, or those that occurred under repub demigods like Reagan? Think they'd be happy to be out on the streets due to no fault of their own? We are a society, which means we take care of each other, from the poorest and weakest to the richest and strongest. If you don't like that concept, then you must be some kind of hermit, as even families and tribes recognize and live by those concepts. The social contract says that we are all better off together than we are alone. No unit of more than one person survives by thinking any other way.
Actually Uffdaguy, the "mission statement", aka Preamble to the Constitution reads:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and scure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Six goals, only one of which is "common defence" and it's not even listed first! Pride of place goes to establishing a "more perfect union" (take that, secessionists!). "Establish Justice" and "secure the Blessings of Liberty" are, to me anyway, two sides of the same coin with "insur(ing) domestic Tranquility" being one of the means to be used to meet those two goals. The other, "promote the general Welfare" can range from building canals and lighthouses to giving Federal lands as bounty to railroad companies and establishing land-grant colleges.
It can also mean such things as Social Security. Medicare and food stamps. Or a Federal minimum wage. Or OSHA and the EPA.
Or, if one's a twit, it can mean every adult male has to have a musket and show up on the village green once a month to muster with his local militia. Arriving on horseback or foot, of course.
"If you're... looking for what Republican voters are telling you, they're not telling you much" Isn't this just generally true no matter what it is you're talking about?
Actually....QUIT spending 42% of the Budget on failed Social Programs, get Government OUT of the "Entitlement" business it was never made for and basically....be SELF RELIANT" Quit looking to Government as your Mother and Father. What's not clear about that?
OK, be self-reliant. Don't pay your taxes, rely only on yourself. In return, get the hell off the highways that I paid for, don't bother the police and firefighters that I pay for, stay away from the schools I pay for, and don't you dare think that the defense I pay for will protect you too. Selfish, unthinking fools like you have literally no concept of what you are talking about when you talk about being self-reliant. You couldn't be self-reliant if you tried. Unless you plan on returning to the days of Daniel Boone and living off the land (that others own, I may add, as to buy land, you must rely on government mechanisms to make a purchase), then you are an arrogant fraud.
My mother and father are not my employees; my government is. I hire and employ my government to hold my contributions (collected by a taxing mandate from wages) to provide me and you income at retirement. Funding is collected from everyone with wages in our "Society." It provides a minimal support for food and housing "Security" at the end of a working career. The pooling of resources helps to cover the variability of the benefits drawn from it, as an "Insurance." With gratitude, we call it "Social Security Insurance." The same thing for healthcare, called "Medicaid." A similar thing for everyone's healthcare, called "Obamacare."
Since the major funding for the government is raised by taxes, if more money is needed the most logical solution seems obvious.
Lowering the FICA taxes seems counter productive since they keep saying how underfunded the program is. Why not take away the $108,000 cap and have everyone pay the 6.25% on their entire salary? Logically it seem that would increase the viability of both programs.
Raising the Medicare eligibility age doesn't make sense unless a larger number of people die before the age of 67.
AND if they take away the mortgage deduction, it will kick the building industry in the stomach ( or lower). I have lived in my house for 20+ years but without that deduction and with the increase in real estate taxes, I don't know if I could stay there. But on the other hand who would be able to buy it?
What I mostly hear from my Republican friends and family is that they want the government to stop "giving handouts to free-loaders" There is this abstract idea of a lot of poor folks (read mostly minorities) are just watching TV and don't care if they ever get a job. They don't want to know that a large proportion of these "moochers" are children and white folks. I wish we could educate these folks more effectively what the reality is. And how when you place the help given to the poor next to the help given to corporations, the question of who is mooching most is quickly answered. The aid to the poor goes back into the economy, the aid to the wealthy does not trickle down but merely becomes more concentrated at the top. But the GOP voters do not want to hear this.
Again Linda, as I told Scott above, if you want to keep the cake you bake yourself, you obviously have no concept of what you are saying. As long as you pay taxes, you get the benefit of those taxes. You are now actually paying lower taxes than you did even under the Bush administration, but I doubt you were complaining about his "damaging moves" at the time. I'll happily cut you loose and let you keep the "cake you bake yourself". Just don't dare freeload off the rest of us taxpayers by using our roads, schools, police, firefighters, teachers, soldiers, etc. You are free to learn the arrogance and stupidity of your ways.
I wish Rachel would keep playing the clip from last time (I think it was from the debt ceiling mess) when Speaker Boehner stated he got 98% of what he wanted. Guess what now it's time for the Pres. to get 98% of what the american public voted for and wants!! Thanks for listening!
So, the Dems and Obama supporters want less of what he and government has promised them? Really?
To think that the GOP does not want to reign in crazy spending and entitlements is absurd, and to think that simply taxing the wealthy will make a dent in this evergrowing hole shows the mentality of those arguing this issue. To continue to try and convince people that this Admin/Government can legislate away poverty and create a level playing field is exactly how O got a second term. Losing this election shows exactly how braindead voters have become and how lousy a campaing Romney ran. I cannot wait to see if those that continue to celebrate this election will be doing so in a few years......and how many Obama stickers are still on cars!
" to think that simply taxing the wealthy will make a dent in this evergrowing hole"
Cutting funding for Planned Parenthood and PBS will have less of an impact than increasing taxes on the rich.
"Crazy spending" is anything you don't support. The truly crazy spending is the amount we spend on the military. But the GOP doesn't want to cut that either.
If you ever lived in a country where there was a War on your soil / homeland you would not have such an attitude towards defense.....you cannot relate to what you have never known....and you should thank God for that!
We spend many times more than we need to to simply defend ourselves.
I recently saw a chart where it showed a timeline comparison of economic upturns and depressions with relation to higher taxes on those who made more money. each time the taxes went down for the "rich" the economy went down. Each time the taxes on the rich were raised the economy went up. I expect it is possible to find the figures but lets face it the "great depression" was ended by Roosevelt raising taxes on the wealthy to 94% of their income. Lets face it we who make little bought into the idea that the rich would not find investing etc profitable if they had to pay high taxes on it. Mostly because we would feel that going into a higher tax bracket and thus bringing home less money would not be profitable for us. However at the scale some of these people make even the loss of a bit extra likely will not make a as great a dent in their income as it would for people at a lower wage scale. a 10% tax on wages will mean a lot more to someone making $10000 than someone making $1000000 even though the second person is paying more as the person making 10,000 has less to spend in the first place.
They need to close corporate loop-holes making it more profitable for companies to send jobs overseas. These corporations basically toss work outside of the country then wonder why their products won't sell or people run up debt trying to survive on wages that are sometimes minimum at best. Generally when a company starts looking for cost cuts they start looking at labour among the first places to cut. And yet labour is also frequently their costumer base.
Those who pine for "self-reliance" should remember that practically no one in this country has been self-reliant in the entire history of this nation. Those rugged pioneers who settled the nation? They had wagons, horses, plows, guns and more produced by other people. I am sure Daniel Boone didn't mine the iron ore so he could build his vaunted rifle, didn't make his own gunpowder. Who in this nation COULD have been self-reliant? The native americans, yet they made the choice NOT to be so, to band together in tribes. They made their own weapons, clothes, housing, hunted or grew all their food. Yet they chose to band together because they saw that it was in their best interest. They were better hunters, better at defending themselves, better off in almost any way. So let's cut the BS about how we need to gut the social safety net and all be more self-reliant. Most of that talk comes from people who couldn't spell their own names without help.
I cannot wait to see how many cars are still proudly wearing Obama stickers in 2-4 years when the reality of 2 terms of failure sets in.
The social programs created to "create and endear voters" to the Democratic has worked to win elections, but the long term results will be devastating.
I cannot wait to see how this Network and others of your "ilk" will spin the catastrophe that is coming, and figure out a way to blame Boehner and Bush......even Reagan?
The US can now claim the worlds most easily bought and influenced electorate, and this blog wants to point fingers at the GOP....In truth, both parties have a hand in getting us to this point......
but Obama can proudly claim "his hands, feet, and socialist ideology" finally put America in it's place....... with the help of your vote!
I do not see one term of failure yet. And I will be content if Obama gets to replace Scalia with someone more moderate or Ginsburg with someone as liberal.
Other than Republicans, where is your source that social programs are only put in place to provide votes for Democrats?
Or is the concept of doing something because it's the morally correct thing, completely alien to...
Oh, right.
To you that vote Republican. Folks They don't care about you, you are just a tool to be used so that your so-called leaders who really work for the likes of the Koch Brothers, ALEC, etc. can do their bidding, not yours.