Can You Do Both!

As a true fiscal conservative, it is necessary that we reel in the deficits while not further inciting the recession. The problem, of course, is no one wants to cut what needs to be cut to make a difference. The big three, Education, Defense, and Health and Human Services are difficult areas to campaign on cutting. The backlash would be incredible, while the commercials write themselves.



So where do American's want to cut. The Economist shined a light on this a while ago. Leading the way is Foreign aid. 71% want to cut foreign aid, and easy foil and not to political reality. However, the reality is "• Foreign aid makes up less than 1% of America's total spending." so although a start, it would have minimal actual effect on the budget. In a nut shell:

The most expendable programs, according to poll takers, were mass transit, housing, agriculture, environment and foreign aid, the runaway winner at 71 percent. The problem? These programs together barely comprise 3 percent of the federal budget. Even if the programs were entirely eliminated, the cuts would do nothing to solve the United States’ long-term entitlement program. Indeed, the responses had no obvious correlation with spending size.

I go to thinking when someone tried to tell my that 50% of all Americans receive some form of entitlements, I believe it was from this WSJ article. What it really says is 50% of all households have at lease one person in it receiving government funds. We're going to look into that this week.

Flash