When I first saw this polling data, I thought we had some great news. After all, it shows that Americans – by a margin of more than 4-to-1 – want to reduce the burden of government spending.
This comports with data from previous polls, including the recent survey showing nearly three-fourths of Americans don’t think Obama’s spending helped the economy, the 2011 poll showing Americans overwhelmingly view big government as the greatest threat to the nation, the strong support for spending cuts in a survey earlier that year, and the 2010 poll revealing that Americans saw excessive spending as the real fiscal challenge facing the country, not deficits.
But then I noticed that Americans in this new survey are to the left of both the French and the Italians. That’s embarrassing. Sort of like losing a foot race to 500-lb elderly lady with one leg.
This isn’t the first time that Americans have lagged some of their European counterparts. Back in 2010, I reported on a survey showing people in the U.S. were to the left of both the Germans and the French.
How shameful. Now the old lady is blind as well, but still beating us.
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But let’s conclude by looking at the glass as being half full. At least the American people are to the right of Obama. His most recent budget proposed to increase the federal budget by $2 trillion over the next 10 years.
Only 14 percent of the population is crazy enough to think that’s a good idea.
P.S. The United Kingdom is the only country where more people want to increase spending rather than cut spending. Not a good sign for that nation’s future. Seems I was quite prescient back in August.
P.P.S. As you can see from this post, if we simply freeze spending (i.e., keep the current level of spending), the budget is balanced in about six years.
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