Voters dislike “government,” like what it does
Last year, U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) shared a story from one of his town hall meetings. A constituent stood to demand that Congress keep “government out of my Medicare.” Inglis reminded the constituent that government created and runs Medicare, a truth-telling affront which may help explain why Inglis was defeated by a rightwing tea-party type in the Republican primary a few months ago.
In any event, the constituent’s comment illustrates something I’ve long believed: “government” is just a word for those things voters don’t like. A strong “anti-government” sentiment doesn’t really illustrate that voters want to cut those government programs which benefit them. Alaska, which prides itself on its frontier independence, is the nation’s biggest welfare state.
Now, a new poll has shown just how contradictory voter attitudes are about the role of government and just how difficult it will be for Congress to make significant cuts to government spending. From the WaPo:
A new study by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University shows that most Americans who say they want more limited government also call Social Security and Medicare “very important.” They want Washington to be involved in schools and to help reduce poverty. Nearly half want the government to maintain a role in regulating health care.
The study suggests that come January, politicians in both parties will confront a challenging and sometimes contradictory reality about what Americans really think about their government. Although Republicans, and many Democrats, have tried to demonize Washington, they must contend with the fact that most major government programs remain enormously popular, including some that politicians have singled out for stiff criticism. . .
Even as Americans generally hold Washington in low regard, they still like much of the work it does. Support for government action on such issues as national defense, health care and fighting poverty remains high, in some cases just where it was a decade ago.Nearly six in 10 say they want their congressional representatives to fight for additional government spending in their districts to spur job creation; fewer (39 percent) want their member of Congress to cut spending, even if that means not as many local jobs. This is a turnabout from September 1994, when 53 percent said they wanted their representative to battle against spending and 42 percent were on the other side.
This oughtta be interesting.
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315 comments Add your comment
marley
October 11th, 2010
1:26 pm
Deport bigoted neocons…
Angry As Hell
October 11th, 2010
1:26 pm
JKL2—I didn’t know that only you or fellow bloggers are entitled to an opinion and that standing up for Fox News and its so-called “journalists” can’t be challenged. That’s the kind of America people like you want.
As a Vietnam veteran, I never protested the U.S. government either. I never went to Stanford or studied abroad, but I did go to college and graduate on my own nickle and paid my own way through out my life. I don’t burn books. That’s the kind of act normally associated with right wing nut jobs like Nazis or left wing Bolsheviks.
And, in the end, I don’t really care what Carlson wears on her little show or what she has to say because I don’t watch that network very often. But if shje lives another 200 years, a journalsit she’ll never be.
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
1:28 pm
CT,
You are not 65 yet but when you turn 65, will you decline to accept Medicare payments? Will you file for social security or decline the money? You mentioned in your title that we ” like what government does”. That’s about as untrue as anything you have said in the last 6 mos.
JKL2
October 11th, 2010
1:30 pm
marley-
100% of dead, illegal alien, felon, environmental, socialist/communist, uneducated, athiest, unwed parent, welfare recipients vote Democrat!
stands for decibels
October 11th, 2010
1:30 pm
And Boxer is going to get it, hahahahaha.
You’re right. Boxer is going to be re-elected.
Rockerbabe
October 11th, 2010
1:34 pm
Bubba: I’ll bet you’ll sign up for your SS and Medicare the very moment you are eligible. . .all of you do, despite all of the griping about everything and nothing?
willie lynch
October 11th, 2010
1:34 pm
My point was more to those who are receiving the benefits now and their ability to navigate that terrain.
It sounds like you have a great deal of confidence in the markets, do you feel SS is better off privatized? Why?
stands for decibels
October 11th, 2010
1:35 pm
Call it what you want but in my opinion SS should be handled the way it’s been to this point.
Don’t worry, it will be. Goopers will pout and complain but ultimately they ain’t doing diddly to it over Obama’s veto.
They couldn’t even get off the dime after Bush had been re-elected, and they had 55 Senate and 232 House seats.
Good Grief
October 11th, 2010
1:35 pm
Angry at 1:26 – “That’s the kind of act normally associated with right wing nut jobs like Nazis or left wing Bolsheviks.” You do know that the Nazi Party was the German Socialist Party, right? How many conservative or right-wing Socialist do you know?
Rockerbabe
October 11th, 2010
1:36 pm
JKL2: most people I know work for a living, take care of their families, pay their taxes, go to church on Sunday and vote Democratic.
Stop denigrading folks you know little about; obviously, you are not in the same class of folks I belong to. . .thank god!
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:37 pm
Stands for Decibles…..But it is broke how much longer do you expect it to survive with no money?
Kamchak's gerbil
October 11th, 2010
1:37 pm
Angry – Just what kind of America do people like you want?
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:37 pm
Rockerbabe….love your name but I am not sure I agree with your logic.
stands for decibels
October 11th, 2010
1:38 pm
Stands for Decibles…..But it is broke
No, it’s not. It has been self-financed responsibly throughout its lifetime.
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
1:38 pm
Bozo and the gang are desperate. Accusing the GOP of financing campaigns with foreign money. Imagine that. Even Bob Schieffer, after Axlerod had presented his case, said, “Is that all you’ve got?” Even the NYT and the Washington Post admit that there is little to no evidence that this has occurred. Times are getting worse for Bozo and the gang. Turning to desperate measures in attempt to save their behinds. 22 days and counting.
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:41 pm
stands for decibles???? WHere in the world do you get that information. The truth is that our government has been borrowing money to pay for SS.
JKL2
October 11th, 2010
1:41 pm
angry- That’s the kind of America people like you want.
Thanks for your service. I thought you were fighting for freedom, not the liberal’s right to censor anything they don’t agree with (fox/talk radio). If you didn’t notice, all those people you love in congress are the same one’s who were protesting you back in the 60’s/70’s.
If you can’t concentrate on what they are saying because their legs are exposed, I’m guessing the problem is yours not theirs. Maybe we should put all newscasters in burka’s? Would that make them more credible for you?
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:44 pm
JKL2……..I love it!
HDB
October 11th, 2010
1:44 pm
kayaker 71 October 11th, 2010
1:38 pm
The question is: How does anyone KNOW?? Just because the Supreme Court says it doesn’t happen doesn’t MEAN it doesn’t happen!! The Chamber of Commerce’s ability to mix its domestic and international funding sources allows such a possibility!! How about complete campaign DISCLOSURE???
Scout
October 11th, 2010
1:45 pm
You’ve seen it before …………. I’ll post it again:
“The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen” Author Unknown
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:47 pm
Scout….very very true.
stands for decibels
October 11th, 2010
1:48 pm
Gee Duh @ 1.44, here’s where you should be getting your information, not from fright-wing radio, about SS and solvency.
long story short, in the midst of a horrific recession it ran a bit in the red this year. As opposed to the rest of the federal budget. It will likely be back in the black very soon, and is projected to be in the black for several decades. It needs rather modest tweaking to make it solvent.
I’m thinking that nobody save for the wingnuttisphere is stupid enough to fall for the notion that the only way we can balance the budget is to screw SS recipients, no matter how much Alan Simpson wants to drool about teats and such.
Anyway, gotta run. Cynthia, have fun with the Elder Hostiles hanging out here.
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:50 pm
STands for decibels….LAST QUESTION….where does the money come from to fund Social Security? Where is it going to come from in the next 10 years when all of the baby boomers start withdrawing from the system.
I do not think it should go away but it should DEFINATELY be privitized.
lennon
October 11th, 2010
1:51 pm
Where did all the compassionate conservatives go?
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:52 pm
Lennon….I am here….
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
1:52 pm
The original proposals for “privatizing” social security included a provision that made it optional as to whether or not you would participate. If you chose not to participate, things would go on as always. Or you could invest on a partial basis with the basics staying pretty much the same. But think what a cut that would make to the federal government not to have those billions coming in for the Congress’s insane spending. The system is broke and the biggest boondoggle in the history of this country was when the original trust fund was absconded by our politicians to spend as they wish. Your Congress at work.
Dick Hertz
October 11th, 2010
1:54 pm
DavidS is exactly the problem of the religion of the Market or the joys of post-modern Mammon worship. I can present hundreds of cases in our everyday life where private firms have been given the role of providing services to the public and it costs far more than government provision of those services.
Halliburton. Xe Services. Privatized and charter schools. Private hospitals vs. public and teaching hospitals. Amtrak. Airports. Air traffic control. Electricity. Highways. In every case when a public service is privatized the costs paid by the public through taxation and the levying of user fees or fee increases substantially. Medicare has an overhead of three percent. Health insurance has overhead of 28 to 43 percent according to Kaiser Permanente, which means that 97 percent of government health insurance money goes to health promotion, while a fourth to nearly a half in private industry goes to private jets, ads, golf, and paying lawyers. The incentives for private health are to deny claims and coverage to keep the money. Privatized electricity is best remembered in California by the trader who was “XXXXing Aunt Susie” by manipulating power prices and availability. Public utilities did not black out and only when they were forced to buy power from the private grid were their prices increased, while private utilities yo-yo’d out of control. Privatized highways and water systems have each resulted in at least a doubling of tolls, fees, and costs.
Government is our only defense against corporations that depend on government for their existence, and that is why it is worth so much money in lobbying and graft for corporations to influence the government and the people through propaganda and lies. Until we relearn the lessons of the Progressive and New Deal eras, we will continue to be robbed and abused by corporations using captive government agencies to harm us all. The market, like nuclear power, can in the right hands help us all but in the wrong hands can devastate us all.
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
1:55 pm
HDB,
“Complete campaign disclosure?” What fantasy land do you live in?
George W
October 11th, 2010
1:59 pm
Dick Hertz….That is right…”big bad evil american corporations”. You better make sure you lock your door tonight when you go to sleep so that they dont come get you! ha
lennon
October 11th, 2010
1:59 pm
Hold me close, George W!
HDB
October 11th, 2010
2:02 pm
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
1:55 pm
HDB,
“Complete campaign disclosure?” What fantasy land do you live in?
Whoever runs on a platform of complete campaign disclosure gets closer to getting my vote! At least, we knew that the Obama campaign was funded by small donations…along with that of Wall Street; presently, we don’t know WHO is funding the midterms…..and what influence they are putting on the electorate!!
DebbieDoRight
October 11th, 2010
2:03 pm
georgian:You know as well as I do that the voter turnout for Obama among African Americans was much greater than for Gore. As you would remember, African Americans went and registered in the millions just so they could elect an African American. Democrats loved it because that put them in the White House.
So what?
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
2:03 pm
HDB,
The idea of Bozo accusing the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to finance political campaigns without proof is grasping at straws. It is sort of like the NYT accusing John McCain of porking one of his campaign aids or like Dan Rather knowingly falsifying the Bush military flap. Desperate measures for desperate times.
Kamchak's gerbil
October 11th, 2010
2:03 pm
Stop paying welfare to everyone – and I mean everyone.
Get a job and get off the gov’t teet.
lennon
October 11th, 2010
2:03 pm
If only we could live the words of a great American patriot, Rodney King, “can’t we all just get along.”
AmVet
October 11th, 2010
2:04 pm
Dick, excellent fact filled post. And good analysis.
In other words, the exact antithesis of the response at 1:59…
marley
October 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
100% of the klu klux klan votes Republican….
AmVet
October 11th, 2010
2:08 pm
“The idea of Bozo accusing the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to finance political campaigns without proof is grasping at straws.”
Agreed,
And silly, since that organization – staffed with policy specialists, lobbyists and lawyers which spends more money than any other lobbying organization on the planet – has an endless plethora of real sins to indict…
John
October 11th, 2010
2:11 pm
@kayaker 71
““Complete campaign disclosure?” What fantasy land do you live in?”
No sure about you kayaker71 but if there are foreigners, whether it’s foreign corporation, foreign governments or terrorist that are trying to buy our country through campaign contributions, I as an American citizen would want to know. I would think every American whether they be Democrat, Republican or Independent would want to know. I find it strange how the building of an Islamic center near Ground Zero caused so much of an uproar but the possibility of foreign groups buying our elections would not cause the same uproar. Think about it, it could be Islamic terrorist organizations that could fund campaigns and we would not know about it since there is no disclosure.
Scout
October 11th, 2010
2:11 pm
George W. :
The “states” have basically become the “counties” of the federal government.
It was never intended to be that way and to get there a multitude of Supreme Court rulings over the years have prostituted the Constitution.
We are not the “United States of America” we are the “Federal Government of America”.
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
2:12 pm
HDB,
Small contributions indeed. Bozo and his minions had a total of 388,283,755 dollars of coded contributions in the 2008 campaign. Among the biggest of his contributors was the Univ of Cal at 1,591,395 dollars. There were twenty other corporations, trusts, PACs, that donated at least 1/2 million dollars. BP donated 15.9M dollars to the democrats, most of it going to Bozo’s campaign. Must I remind you that BP is a foreign company based in the UK.
Scout
October 11th, 2010
2:13 pm
marley :
I doubt that figure of 100% but up through the 1960’s at least the KKK voted Dixie Democrat.
JKL2
October 11th, 2010
2:15 pm
john- if there are foreigners, whether it’s foreign corporation, foreign governments or terrorist that are trying to buy our country through campaign contributions
George Soros says “What”?
HDB
October 11th, 2010
2:19 pm
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
2:03 pm
The question isn’t if Obama is grasping at straws; the question is: Is there a semblance of TRUTH in the accusation?? If there is…..disclose your funding sources so that the t ruth be really known!!
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
2:24 pm
Bozo’s gripe is against the Chamber of Commerce, which he accuses of using foreign money donated to fund Republicans in the midterm elections. Did Bozo not use a substantial amount of documented and proven foreign money, donated by BP, for his campaign? These contributions to Bozo are not new. During Bozo’s single year in the Senate, BP donated over 77K to his campaign fund. Pot, meet kettle.
HDB
October 11th, 2010
2:24 pm
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
2:12 pm
….from Opensecrets.org……
Individual contributions $656,357,572 88%
PAC contributions $1,830 0%
Candidate self-financing $0 0%
Federal Funds $0 0%
Other $88,626,223 12%
Might be….JUST a bit outside….
Jimmy62
October 11th, 2010
2:31 pm
John: Obama accepted donations paid for on anonymous foreign credit cards all through his campaign. Some of us thought that was a bad idea and said so and were dismissed. Now all of the sudden Obama thinks it’s a bad thing. But somehow I don’t think he’ll be criticizing himself for it, or returning all those donations.
Obama: Bought and paid for by foreign terrorists. You can’t prove it’s not true, since the donation were anonymous.
kayaker 71
October 11th, 2010
2:36 pm
HDB,
The issue here is where the money came from. As far as individual contributions, as long as the contribution is made by credit card and the amount is under $200, it does not have to a coded contribution. Wonder how much of that 656M in individual contributions came from foreign contributors? Bozo is accusing the Chamber without having proof to back up his accusations. In essence, so am I . In truth, we really do not know. But it is a desperation move on his part wouldn’t you say, especially in light of how much foreign money that he has accepted over the last three years?
John
October 11th, 2010
2:38 pm
“Did Bozo not use a substantial amount of documented and proven foreign money, donated by BP, for his campaign? These contributions to Bozo are not new. During Bozo’s single year in the Senate, BP donated over 77K to his campaign fund.”
And you know that how, kayaker 71? Could it be he disclosed his funding to the American people and allowed them to come to their own conclusions. It’s about disclosure…and letting the American people who is funding campaign ads. Republicans are running campaigns that even the candidates don’t know is funding these ads. Since it’s not disclosed, think about any potential embarrassment it could be to a candidate if the funding sources are made public and it’s some terrorist organization or foreign government. If I were a candidate, I definitely would want to know who is funding ads in support of my candidacy.
Angry As Hell
October 11th, 2010
2:42 pm
JKL2—-You don’t know who in Congress I like or dislike. You paint me with a broad brush and think you’re being cute. Did you serve this country with 4 years of your life? How about your buddy George W? Did y’all put your fat in the fire, or leave it up to a relatively small number of us to do the job for you? I only ask that question because so many people who are pro-war and who want to kick someone foreigner’s a$$ talk real tough, but can’t find their way to a local military recruiting office. That’s why I dislike so much cowards like Dick Cheney who made sure he held a student deferment from the draft when he attended college, and then when, as vice president, he was asked why he didn’t volunteer for military service during the Vietnam War, he stated, “I had more important things to do.” I can guarantee you that the 58,000-plus heroes whose names are etched on the Vietnam Wall had pretty important things they wanted to do with their lives if they could home in one piece.
I beieve in small, but workable government. I believe the government should stay out of my home and bedroom and not tell me or my wife or my daughter what they can or should do with their bodies. I do not believe that government should dictate to me what religion I ought to believe in and should not crticize or snoop on my neighbors who may believe in a different type of Supreme Being than me or not believe in a Supreme Being of any kind. I do NOT believe in Sharia Law or the law of any religion that would punish anyone for not believing in what the theocracy dictates. I believe the number one responsibility of government is to protect its citizens — that protection is not just limited to protection from criminals or in times of war, but also includes protection from those who would poison the food my family and I eat and the air we breathe. I also believe that citizens have a right to protect themselves within th elaw. I believe in the capitalist system, but do not believe that business should be given total, unlimited control over what products or service they sell to the public. I believe that most business leaders are honest, but I also know that some are thieves and ought to be behind bars.
Those are some of the things I believe in and the things for which I defended this country many years ago when I was a very young man. So, don’t feel compelled to fill in any blanks you think exist in that list. I’m not that complicated. And if you can’t live with any of that, I don’t really care, because I owe no one in this country an expalanation or justification for those things.