From It Affects You
There’s a new AP poll measuring Americans’ attitudes towards issues relating to Katrina – mostly it highlights the usual areas.
But viewing the topline results (PDF), I found a very interesting question not featured in the AP’s own story on their survey:
If you had to choose, which one of the following options do you think is the best way for the government to pay for the relief effort for Hurricane Katrina:
Cut spending on Iraq: 42%
Delay or cancel additional tax cuts: 29%
Add to the federal debt and gradually pay it back: 14%
Cut spending for other domestic programs like education, welfare, transportation, and health care: 11%
Not sure: 4%
As I’m sure you noticed, these priorities are exactly opposite from what the president and the Republican controlled congress plan to do. Conservative leaders, in fact, could not possibly wait to begin envisioning the ways they would try to cut domestic spending while quickly promising not to raise taxes. No doubt some were pleased Katrina offered them a way to propose what they could not have otherwise.
While they avoid eliminating parts of Bush’s tax cuts, the deficit will surely soar to greater heights than it has during the first part of Bush’s watch. That, of course, will require additional cuts in domestic spending down the road greater than what they are proposing now. Oh how they must be looking forward to that day.
This is not what Americans want. But the Republican Noise Machine will kick into high gear, throwing some pseudo economics out there to justify faulty economic policy and convince us that what is in our worst interests is really in our best interests. I can easily hear Bush and other Conservatives talking about how “tough times require sacrifice” as they ask a single mom to go without health insurance for her child, all the while they cling to their tax cuts for the wealthy like a baby clings to a security blanket.
The scary thing is they have pulled off such sleight of hand politics before. Conservatives might just succeed in delivering to Americans what they neither want nor need, particularly if we let them. The Conservative position is weakened, they have been exposed, and people in large numbers no longer trust George Bush. Going up against poll numbers like this in the best of circumstances should be a steep uphill battle. There’s no reason we should even let them get out of the gates. Fighting Dems, mount up.
From It Affects You
