Americans are both ready to bear bigger spending cuts than some think, and ready to move past the current budget showdown

Ryan Streeter

Andrew Rugg has a good piece at The American today suggesting that Americans may have a bigger appetite for serious spending cuts than pundits think.

Surveying a number of recent polls, he concludes the following:

1. Americans view the deficit as an immediate problem that must be confronted. He points out that even though Americans rank the deficit below the economy on what worries them most right now, they recognize that the long-term consequences of the deficit are dire.
2. Americans prefer cutting federal programs to raising taxes. This is not too surprising, given general resistance to tax hikes (when asked in general, rather than tax hikes on the rich, which always has more support).
3. Americans acknowledge that some pain on their part is going to be required. Rugg points out, rightly, that when you ask not about cutting entitlement programs in general (Social Security), but about specific reforms (raising the retirement age), you get more support for cuts. Our own polling of grassroots conservatives also shows this to be the case (i.e., even conservatives aren’t too warm on entitlement reform in general, but support specific reforms at a higher rate).

The new CBS poll, out last night, also shows some of these dynamics: over half of Americans think we’ll need to trim entitlements, and a majority support means-testing, while a majority don’t support raising the retirement age. Cuts to Medicare, in particular, are not favored.

But the poll also shows that a large majority of Americans in both parties, including a majority of Tea Partiers, would like to see their parties compromise on the budget showdown. This of course means that large numbers of Republicans essentially support Congress settling for less than the $61 billion the party’s leaders set as a goal.

This was not how the question were framed, though, so we can expect that Republican support for compromise would have dropped if it were.

Still, the poll results suggest that Americans want to get this current budget debate over with and move on to bigger issues.

Politically, the Republicans will ride a bumpy road for awhile if they settle for less. But taking this line – “let’s settle this year’s budget, which won’t even dent the deficit, so we can tackle bigger deficit and growth issues” – may be the best bet right now. Even Tea Partiers might – might! – be willing to go along.