How Should We Fix Our Budget Problems

A new NBC/WSJ poll asks Americans to make choices about how to fill the hole in our budget:

The most popular: placing a surtax on federal income taxes for those who make more than $1 million per year (81 percent said that was acceptable), eliminating spending on earmarks (78 percent), eliminating funding for weapons systems the Defense Department says aren’t necessary (76 percent) and eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries (74 percent).

The least popular: cutting funding for Medicaid, the federal government health-care program for the poor (32 percent said that was acceptable); cutting funding for Medicare, the federal government health-care program for seniors (23 percent); cutting funding for K-12 education (22 percent); and cutting funding for Social Security (22 percent).

This just confirms my view (hope?) that the last election was an aberration as angry tea-partiers showed up in an off-year election and skewed the results, throwing the election into the hands of a political party that mistakenly believes it has been given a mandate for taking draconian action to cut government spending on social programs, not to mention taking out public-employee unions to boot. This is just the latest poll that suggests that these leaders are over-reading the results of the election and misreading the mood of the public.