{"id":195005,"date":"2015-10-28T02:25:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T02:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=195005"},"modified":"2015-10-28T18:47:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T18:47:31","slug":"apgfk-poll-americans-want-govt-shutdown-unless-federal-spending-is-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/apgfk-poll-americans-want-govt-shutdown-unless-federal-spending-is-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"AP\/GfK Poll: Americans Want Gov’t. Shutdown Unless Federal Spending Is Cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0AP\/GfK Poll published on October 27th<\/span><\/a>, 50% of Americans agree with the statement, “Congress should ONLY increase the debt ceiling if it makes significant spending cuts at the same time,\u00a0even if that means there will be considerable reductions in government services and programs.\u201d<\/i><\/b> 35% disagree. 11% marked a third box: “Congress should NOT increase the debt ceiling under any circumstances, even if that means the U.S.\u00a0defaults on its debt.\u201d<\/i><\/b> (And, it does, in fact, mean<\/i> <\/span>that: the government would default on its existing debt.) So: a solid 61% favor the position of congressional Republicans on this matter \u2013 the Federal Government should default on its existing debts unless federal spending going forward will be slashed (drastically slashed, as will be explained subsequently here).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Americans are confused about the matter: though they strongly favor the Republican position in the abstract, they slightly favor the Democratic position in reality. The 1,027 respondents slightly favored the position of \u201cDemocratic leaders in Congress\u201d<\/i><\/b> over that of \u201cRepublican leaders in Congress\u201d<\/i><\/b> on the issue. 51% disliked the Democrats on it, but 58% disliked the Republicans on it. 17% liked the Democrats on it, but only 10% liked the Republicans on it. 32% had no opinion on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked \u201cDo you support, oppose, or neither support nor oppose, raising the federal debt limit in order to avoid defaulting on U.S. government debts?\u201d<\/i><\/b> 24% support, 29% oppose, and 44% neither. So: a massive 44% don\u2019t even care whether the country defaults, but the rest are slightly opposed to such default.<\/span><\/p>\n

56% say that \u201cReducing government spending\u201d <\/i>is \u201cso important that it would be worth shutting down the government to achieve it.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

At present,<\/a><\/span>\u00a054% of discretionary (or non<\/i>-mandatory) federal spending is for the military. 9% is for Health & Human Services. 7% is for EPA and Energy Departments. 6% is for the Education Department. 5% is for the State Department and foreign aid. 3% is for HUD. Those are 84% of the total; so, all the rest of the government is just 16%. That includes, for examples: VA, Labor Department, DOT, NASA, and Agriculture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The lion\u2019s shares of non<\/i>-discretionary spending goes to HHS, SS, Medicare and Medicaid.<\/span><\/p>\n

The person who is likely to become the new Speaker of the House, Republican Paul Ryan, \u00a0<\/b>committed himself in 2011 to the goal of eliminating by 2050 all federal spending except for the military<\/b><\/span><\/a>. The rest would be privatized \u2013 available only on the basis of an individual\u2019s ability-to-pay. As for regulatory agencies, they\u2019d be eliminated: no EPA, no FDA, no laws or regulations at all regarding product-safety or the environment, and nothing to protect workers\u2019 rights. All rights would belong only to owners: stockholders, lenders, and their hired executives who represent their interests. (But no collective bargaining to represent the interests of employees.) Even enforcing any existing laws against slavery could become problematic. Ryan is a libertarian, and libertarians derive their views from the economist Adam Smith. Smith said, in his Wealth of Nations<\/i> (Book 4, Ch. 7, Part II), that the French system of slavery was superior to the British, because in the former, \u201cthe government is in a great measure arbitrary\u201d (i.e., there was no regulation<\/i> <\/span>of slavery, at all, by the French government), whereas the latter, the British, system, “intermeddles in some\u00a0measure in the management of the\u00a0private property of the master.\u201d The supremacy of private property rights (and slavemasters\u2019 rights) was consistently affirmed. Ryan affirms owners\u2019 rights, over and above the rights of any mere taxpayers (the people who must pay the debts of government), and this position is resoundingly affirmed,\u00a0even by President Barack Obama<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0Polling confirms that this view dominates also among the American public, though the public are very confused about it. (The President certainly is not.<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the direction in which Americans are heading, if one is to believe what they tell to pollsters, and if one is to read carefully the statements by Paul Ryan, as the economist\u00a0Dean Baker has done<\/span><\/a>. This seems to be America\u2019s future. Unless something happens that will place it finally in America\u2019s past.<\/span><\/p>\n

One could reasonably doubt the findings in the latest AP\/GfK poll, especially because no other polling firm has asked these questions or anything close; and a mere single poll on a topic could show nothing but a fluke. However, seeing how lopsided the findings are in this poll in favor of slashing government spending, instead of redirecting it towards the poor after trillions of dollars have already been doled during the past six years in Wall Street bailouts, no one can reasonably doubt that the American public are more anti-government than they are anti-bankster. There\u2019s lots of anger against the government, but the banksters who have benefited from ripping off the American public got off scot-free<\/span><\/a>, and the public aren\u2019t enraged about that. Occupy Wall Street left no mark at all, but the Tea Party and other slash-government freaks took over one Party and constitute also a substantial \u201cDLC\u201d voice in the other Party. Obama even came into office aiming to cut Social Security.<\/span><\/a> Generally speaking, propaganda (or \u2018public relations\u2019 \u2013 such as that \u201cAdam Smith was a good guy\u201d) works. Especially in a country where that PR is called \u2018journalism\u2019 instead. In order to clean one\u2019s mind of an ounce of fake \u2018history,\u2019 one needs at least a ton of the real stuff. But what we\u2019ve had all our lives isn\u2019t an ounce of the fake stuff. It\u2019s many many tons of those mental toxins. (For a typical example: \u201cAdam Smith was a good guy.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

That could explain poll-findings such as these.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse According to the\u00a0AP\/GfK Poll published on October 27th, 50% of Americans agree with the statement, “Congress should ONLY increase the debt ceiling if it makes significant spending cuts at the same time,\u00a0even if that means there will be considerable reductions in government services and programs.\u201d 35% disagree. 11% marked a third box: “Congress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":167545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461],"tags":[534,8606,8605,930,903,691,540,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-195005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-editorials","9":"tag-conservatism","10":"tag-federal-deficits","11":"tag-government-spending","12":"tag-liberalism","13":"tag-libertarianism","14":"tag-polls","15":"tag-republicans","16":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}