New York Times reporter Matt Bai has tried to argue that the public is really worried about the budget deficit. He’s tried to find polling evidence to show the public favors some form of budget-cutting austerity,which usually leads him to focus on numbers that support his argument while ignoring those that run counter to his political preference.
He’s back at it today (11/5/10),in a piecewarningRepublicans to not confuse their midterm for some sort ofmandate.He tries to make a case that the voters were really with the Tea Party on some key issues:
All of this implies that Republicans think the voters are with their most ardent activists on the economic issues of the day. And there is a persuasive case to be made that they’re right about this, at least as far as the conservative critique of federal spending is concerned.
In exit polling in November, 56 percent of voters said government was doing too much that should be left to the private sector and individuals, compared with 38 percent who thought it should be doing more.
It’s important to remember that this is a poll of2010 midterm voters–a subset of the total voting population, and one that would skew Republican, given the electoral outcome.It’shard to draw many conclusions from such a vague idea anyway, but Bai has better evidence:
In a Pew poll from December, 70 percent of voters said they saw the federal deficit as a major problem that needed to be addressed now–a powerful show of support for the Tea Party argument.
Huh. When I clicked on that link–which is a different Pew poll–I saw that when people were asked what was more important, jobs or the deficit, jobs won 45-22. And the other Pew poll–an exit poll of voters–showed “cutting spending to reduce the deficit” running neck and neck with “spending to create jobs.” I don’t see any of that supporting “the Tea Party argument,” as best I can understand what that argument might be.
Looking at other polls doesn’t much help–if you scan some of the summaries at PollingReport.com, for instance, you see surveys like a recent CBS poll where voters express far more concern about jobs (56 percent) than the deficit (4 percent).
Bai’s reporting style seems reminiscent ofJohn Stossel. He starts with a premise–some Tea Party ideas are popular, people want to attack the deficit– and cherrypicks evidence to supportthat conclusion. So he can write things like “voters endorsed the Tea Party ideal of a radically more parsimonious federal government” and point to evidence thatmaybe–if you squint really hard–supports that conclusion, while rejecting substantial evidence to the contrary.
The public may not understand the deficit.What they do understand is spending what you don’t have.Don’t try to complicate the poll or the TEA parties message.
From the December Pew Poll
Relatively few Americans (16%) believe that focusing mostly on cutting major government programs is the best approach to take. Even among Republicans, only about a third (32%) say a strategy focused mostly on cutting government is the right line of attack.
There is broad, and bipartisan, agreement that the best approach to reducing the federal budget deficit involves a combination of both government cutbacks and increased taxes. Roughly two-thirds (65%) express this view, including majorities of Republicans (58%), Democrats (72%) and independents (67%).
Holy mackerel, Helen Bedd, do you mean that the Tea-flakers actually are right off the reservation on the whole taxation matter? Who’d a thunk that normal Americans–that is, the vast majority of people, who don’t think massive tax breaks for the rich and traitorous Corporations is a good idea–want the afore-mentioned to start paying their fair share? Even some Tea-men and -women think it’s high time we cut way back on military spending too. What will we get? Massive cuts in Social Security, no doubt, as well as permanent tax cuts for the rich (they’ll have to wait two years, but they always get what they want).
Most people know that government spending is the problem.This is not a fiduciary problem.Taxing those who make over 250 thou, or those making 250 mil at anywhere from 50% to 100% will not pay the interest on the interest of the dept.Your spouting nonsense.It just feeds the coffers of class warfare. Accomplishes nothing.And for the love of God tax breaks is simply a way of you saying not increasing their tax burden from what it is now.Who is it that pays the gross majority of all taxes?And what 50% pays no fed income tax?if the rich payed 2% of all the taxes as opposed to the true number ,you would have a leg to stand on.What amount of the toltal taxes do you want those making over 250 thou to pay?100%?Should we just tell all our kids to forget about college and that evil profit motive as the government will take care of all of us?And fleece you if your stupid enough to succeed so what is the point.Maddness.Sheer madness.Thank God the calvary is here.
michael e-are you just trying to raise laughs! We have just been through a decade with the lowest rates of federal income taxation since WWII. This decade has also featured the weakest job growth and some of the highest rates of increase in college tuition. The story is not runaway government growth. That story is explained by decreasing taxes while fighting multiple unfunded wars off the books. I would bet that if the government spent all of this money on social spending we would have an economy humming along and kids able to pay affordable tuition at school. Making the people who have benefitted from despoiling our commons pay more of their fair share will not solve the problem by itself, but it would be fair!
mikey e are you suffering from dyslexia / illiteracy/ innumeracy problems? Is that the cause of your complete and utter lack of any understanding on any kind of issue? Should we be going easier on you?
“The public (read michael e) may not understand the deficit.What they do understand is spending what you don’t have.Don’t try to complicate the poll or the TEA parties message.”
Don’t confuse tea-bagger morons like mikey e with reality, you’re making his head hurt with the truth! This scares it!
They prefer pathetic excuses like Bai who live by the credo,
‘If in doubt, make shit up so you can lie more convincingly’
Tishado
The story is not runaway gov “growth”.It is runaway gov spending.So you believe if they taxed the rich at a higher rate we would be A-ok?Actually a tax rate of 98%would not make a dent and would of course be ultimately disastrous.So there goes that theory.You believe the wars broke us?Total cost is not a grain of sand on the beach in this ballooning monsterous dept,so out with that.
So if your child goes to school and does well,and becomes a Dr say. Employ’s ten other doctors in a cardiac practice and makes a great living with monstrous pressure and time input….He/she is now a member of those who are “despoiling our commons and ought to pay their fair share.”Ok got ya.The old class warfare ploy.Tax sucess and subsidize failure.And what is that fair share pray tell?35%..45%….55%….85%…..95%.? Those villains are paying 87 plus percent of all taxes while the bottom 50 pay nothing.They must do more?Ok answer a simple question.How much more?
R -bobert Still using filthy monickers like Tea -baggers?Do you use the N word to define the president of the united states?Or the C word toward our secretary of state or gov Sarah Palin?Or would the W word be better for the ladies.Really go home and clean up your act before you offer opinion
Watching michael e struggle with basic economics and tax policy is like watching a starfish working with a can opener.
the two bush wars of choice have cost, to date, $1 trillion dollars. recent news articles peg the cost of long term medical costs for vets of those conflicts at another $1 trillion….
no one is saying the cost of the wars “broke” the us, but just the current cost equals over 7% of our total federal national debt. [1 / 14 = 0.0714285714]… if that’s a “grain of sand” it’s a damned big one
the us had never fought wars before without raising taxes…bush lowered taxes and put the war on the chinese credit card.
Claiming that calling a woman the c-word or an Africian American the n-word is the same as calling someone who chose to be a teabagger a teabagger is the grossest form of false equivalency imaginable.
Bullshit only a white, male teabagger could come up with.
Michael e., The reason that the bottom 50% don’t pay more in income tax is because the top 5% of the population has all the money. They have had the greatest growth in real income for the last 30 years. If all of America’s efforts in production of the economy is in rewarding the every rich, then why shouldn’t they pay more? It is they who are reaping all of the benefits.
Why do the so called investors get so much of the credit for the economy in this country. It is the workers that are doing the producing of the economy. The top earners just happen to have the extra money. It isn’t through their individual work effort that has given them so much wealth. Look at Wall Street, they invest in money of which 76% of the transactions take up but seconds to get their profits and it is done by software not in individual effort or creative talent.
You Mikey are such a parrot of right wing tomfoolery. Why do you worship the rich so much? Becoming rich is as dependent on luck as anything else.
To get rich: inheritance, for which no work was performed to obtain the riches; having the talent and the resources to exploit a particular idea that rewards you, inventing a widget, selling 100 million of them, and making $.50 on each one, that would make you rich, but luck would also be in play;becoming rich by exploiting the housing foreclosures, in which you can get rich off of the misfortune of others.
I would like for you to tell me how a person gets rich without having someone else become poor because of it. It has been shown that the best economy is one in which the middle class is paid high wages and the rich are taxed at high rates. Not one in which the rich have all the money and the middle class gets peasant wages. Even Henry Ford said that he had to give his workers more wages so that he had someone who could by the cars he was producing.
Mikey, you seem to have a nauve notion of the greatness of the rich. You are looking through primrose glasses at those who have all the money.
People who say, well, I have never worked for a poor person, somehow don’t get it. The rich became rich off of those who did the work. Why in this society do we think that it is ok for a CEO to make 200 times what the workers make whose talents are what is making the money for all at the company.
Please explain it to me. But please , no FOX noise Republican talking points and worn out rhetoric touted by the non thinkers, who equate the wisdom of science with the wisdom of folk magic, whose notion I got off of the Heritage website.
@ Raymond
The reason lots of folks don’t pay income taxes include: the home mortgage deduction, the child tax credit and/or the earned income credit. In other words, our tax policies were created to encourage certain outcomes: Get married, buy a house, raise a family. Do that, and get a break.
The other major group who pays no federal income tax…seniors living on social security with modest [or no] investments.
Plus, when the Bush economy collapsed, lots of folks lost hours or their jobs and saw their income drop below the taxable level. That’s why the percentage of those paying no income tax has increased in the last few years.
The bottom 47% pays all sorts of taxes….payroll, medicare, gasoline, utility, property, sales….etc.
Poor Mikey thinks “class warfare” is the poor pointing out the reality that the rich are screwing them .
NYT
While House Republican leaders have not said what they would cut, they have said what they would spare: defense.
They have also pledged to shield seniors from spending cuts, apparently to please recipients of entitlements like Medicare and Social Security.
That leaves programs totaling $477 billion, 14 percent of the $3.5 trillion federal budget, including education, environment, transportation, diplomacy, disease control, scientific research, investor protection, and all other basic government duties.
Cutting any arbitrary amount â┚¬” like $100 billion â┚¬” from discretionary spending will not result in meaningful long-term deficit reduction because deficits are not driven by discretionary spending.
They are driven by rising health care costs and chronic tax shortfalls.
Raymond nothing you say makes any sense economically what so ever unless you are a socialist, or a communist ,or God knows what.If by some miracle you are a capitalist who is simply talking of correct ways to tweak the system i apologize for not taking your remarks more seriously.In any case you have a long way to go to understand the basic economic principles of micro and macro economics within an open trade capitalist system.And how personal success is at the core of the upwardly mobile economic experience and how it benefits government in all its functions.
We must reason through that the only thought the left can come up with to generate more income for the fed is to have a limitless sliding scale of taxation for those who make over 250 thou.For those making real coin a special place in hell will be reserved and they will be fleeced in any amount needed.Because the fed needs the money and they deserve to have it taken?And the left feels this will have zero effect on the ideals of upward mobility so entrenched in our system?So they strangle the money tree with the vine of government and thinks the shade it provides will remain.
Helen the top percent pays those taxes…. plus 87 % of all taxes.How much is enough?My question to you is how much should a man worth10 million(for instance) pay in taxes?And how much should government confiscate upon his death?
I have always though a flat tax with no exemptions except for the poor,food etc is the fair way to go.
It will take more solutions than just cutting government spending. It will require an increase in tax revenue and also cuts in waste and overcharging the government for services rendered. We have a President ready to do what is necessary to get this country back on track. It will take both parties working together to come to reasonable solutions. Americans like their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If that is all these republicans are willing to see cut and they are not willing to increase tax revenue we will get nowhere at solving our country’s financial crisis. If tax cutting republicans have no other ideas and will not cooperate with other ideas from Democrats we will be right where we are now in two years. Wars and continuing wars should end and then more action on what is right, not what is politicially popular.
Vicki I could agree with you on some principles i think.But we do not now have a president who is ready to do what is necessary.I am sorry to say it- but he is clueless.And he will soon be gone.The most we can hope for is that he does nothing till then.