February 26, 2010
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shrink government? HOW exactly?
CORRECTION:
I wrote this article yesterday to be posted today using future posting. Since I wrote it the original article was corrected which I just discovered. What had happened is ANES posted original data that was incorrect and posted a new data in erratum. Apparently the reporter who reported this was unaware of the errata at first.Here is the new CORRECT chart:
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/02/corrected_graph_for_conflicted.html
I actually find the new chart to be substantially MORE interesting than the original (below). It means that while still majorities of conservatives don’t agree on anything that they want to cut, by far the largest is Foreign Aid with 49%. Second is Welfare with 35%. And third is War on Terrorism at around 25%. That last I find extremely encouraging. It means that the War on Terror is not nearly as supported amongst conservatives as the Republican party and Fox News would have people believe. In any case the overall point is the same. Majorities of self-described conservatives agree on nothing that needs to be cut but just generally agree that something needs to be cut. In fact the survey also has the result that 54% of self-described conservatives actually want government spending increased.
Original Entry Below:
http://www.salon.com/news/the_numerologist/2010/02/24/conflicted_conservatives/index.html
As reported on Salon.com, the American National Election Study did a survey of 12 of the biggest programs our government spends money on and asked people whether they wanted the government to increase spending, reduce spending, or keep spending about the same on it.
The above chart is a list of the results of the survey for self-described conservatives. As you can see the percent of conservatives who want any particular program to actually be cut is less than 25%. The program most conservatives want cut is Child Care, which 20% of conservatives think should be cut.
So, Conservatives, WHAT should be cut? If government needs to be smaller, then name specifics. What should the government spend less on? Because it seems like there’s nothing in our government that the people of this country, even the conservatives amongst us, actually want to see cut.
Comments (5)
very interesting. I’d be interested to see a comparison to self described liberals. you never know, it might not be all that different at all
Bush and reagan both doubled the national debt, all republican presidents and congresses have increased it. Clinton actually reduced spending and upped taxes about 5% on the richest americans and got a surplus, and got crucified for it.
The myth of the fiscal conservative.
@jenessa1889 - @agnophilo - Please note the entry contained an error that has been corrected.
@jenessa1889 - no doubt self-described liberals have their own biases and hypocrisies but generally liberals don’t pretend that they want money cut for anything except for national defense, war on terror, war on drugs, type programs. Cutting spending is not a core principle of their platform.
@agnophilo - This is true, but has more to do with the hypocrisy of the party platform than the conservative movement. Much like the Democratic party supports things that they think will get them elected and don’t necessary follow through on it (public option, single payer, cracking down on torture, prosecuting war crimes, etc.), the Republican party supports things like smaller government because they think it will get them elected and then don’t follow through with it as we saw during the Bush years. I’d say conservatives believe in smaller government, but republicans just believe in bad dysfunctional government so that corporations can run roughshod over everyone. That’s a huge difference. The former I can have some respect for even if I strongly disagree. For the latter I have none.
@nephyo - Well said. And yeah I saw the correction when I went to the site, but thanks for letting me know. Some people find out what they say is false and don’t correct it if it seems to support their “side”. I’ve only not corrected an inaccuracy once or twice and then only if it’s been weeks since the initial blog and nobody’s ever going to read it again (I’m lazy, lol).