TEA Party Supporters Oppose Medicare/Medicaid Cuts

[anvi]

I'm not entirely sure how legitimate this poll is.  But, if the results are in any way reliable, then it's just one more piece of evidence to support the line attributed to Churchill: "the best argument against democracy is five minutes with the average voter."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2011/04/20/2011-04-20_majority_of_tea_party_supporters_oppose_cuts_to_medicare_medicaid_poll.html

Majority of Tea Party supporters oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid: poll

BY ALIYAH SHAHID   
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, April 20th 2011, 2:09 PM

The government-blasting Tea Party doesn't want any changes to two of the government's biggest programs.

The vast majority of Tea Party supporters - 70% - oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, a new McClatchy-Marist poll found.

The results are somewhat in line with the feelings of registered voters as a whole - 80% oppose proposed cuts to those entitlements.

But it is something of a surprise for Tea Partiers, whose political platform is built on the principles of slashing government spending.

Medicare and Medicaid are among the country's most expensive programs, and their projected growth is largely responsible for expanding deficit projections.

The poll revealed 92% of Democrats, 73% of Republicans and 75% of independents also oppose the cuts.

That's bad news for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who unveiled a sweeping 2012 federal budget proposal earlier this month that would slash the budget deficit by about $6.2 trillion over the next decade.

Critics of the plan say it will effectively end the national health plans for the elderly and poor.

Under Paul's proposal, the government would give Medicare beneficiaries vouchers for private coverage instead of directly reimbursing hospitals for seniors' care, which it does today.

Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor and disabled, would also have big changes, with the federal government giving states block grants to spend as they wish.

According to the poll, less than half of Tea Party supporters, 45%, said they support increasing taxes on Americans who have an income of more than $250,000 (a move President Obama has floated) - compared with 43% of Republicans, 83% of Democrats and 63% of independents.

[anvi]

Since no one wants to comment on this poll, I'll follow up.

On the one hand, this is by now a very predictable result in the U.S.  We have for some time now, on both sides of the aisle, been a nation that expects to have everything for nothing.  Given that, it's not hard to understand why we're in a box-canyon of debt.  That is why everyone who is asked personally wants their own taxes cut, why both Republicans and Democrats who promise smaller government get rewarded at the polls, and why at the same time, no one wants or expects cuts in government spending to hurt their preferred programs.  

I am, all the same, a bit surprised to see these kinds of numbers (if they are remotely accurate) from TEA "party" supporters.  The main mantra in this community, in the media that nurtures them and from the people themselves, is one I had until now understood to be: "cut spending, cut entitlements, lower taxes, balance the budget."  But here we have almost overwhelming resistance to cutting the very entitlements that are being constantly, vocally and now even legislatively targeted.  Very puzzling.  It's like a person saying to their spouse as they walk into the grocery store: "Now, remember what we've promised each other!  We're not spending any money on dairy anymore, right?  Now, where do they keep the ice cream again?"

We really need to demand honesty from our politicians.  If they're Republicans who want to cut spending but not raise taxes, they need to look their middle-class and lower middle-class constituents in the face and say: "listen, if you're not going to or just can't manage to save enough for your own retirement, then don't retire, because the government is not going to be able to help you anymore."  If they're Democrats who want to pound their fists on the podium about saving entitlements, they have to look their middle-class and lower-middle-class constituents in the face and say: "cut up all of your credit cards except the one with the lowest credit limit now, because Uncle Sam ain't just hunting for the millionaires and billionaires, he is coming for you."

And, most of all, we need to demand honesty, and a little genuine patriotism, from ourselves.  We have to stop pointing fingers at our customary enemies and demanding that only they have to sacrifice something, because we all do.  Even if we do the right thing, life is going to be pretty tough for a while.  The middle class is not going to have any genuine security for some time, and the upper-classes should stop expecting unexpectable profits and government subsidies and tax exemptions with big red-white-and-blue ribbons wrapped around them every year.  And, despite what I myself said in an unfortunate cynical mood on another thread this morning, we can't just give up on each other, because, once again, everyone will have to have some real skin in the game, starting yesterday, if we want things to eventually get better.  

    







  

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Politicians are very often shortsighted about how they encourage this process.
for  example, there are the Republicans who were complaining about the cuts to Medicare to fund Obama's universal health insurance plan. I have to imagine that just fed further the impression that it was some inviolable program. The whole idea of "entitlements" is a powerful sham, as people come to people they are paying into it, and that it's already their money so they end up saying they don't want the government touching their Medicare.  likewise the way Obama and the Democrats talk about how any change to Medicare is unAmerican and hating grandma is going to make it very hard for them with their own plan to cut costs if they ever decide to get serious about it. 

[courts]

Anyone surprised by this probably also wonders what the hell that fiery thing in the sky is.

[anvi]

shua,

I don't think entitlements, at least in their inception, were a scam.  Before Social Security was established, about half of American seniors died in poverty, and now less than ten percent do, and the program at its beginning was easily fundable, with 42 workers for every retiree.  GOPers said in the floor debate that Social Security represented "the lash of the dictator" and it would "enslave workers," while congressional lefties sympathetic to socialism clamored that the program would only temporarily "buy off the revolution."  Medicaid too, despite its frightening growth from day one and its horribly inadequate financing by the federal government, covers people that private plans up to now didn't want any part of, and still grows at markedly slower rates than expenditures for private plans.   I don't think, if given the choice, we would really want, as a society, to see the elderly fall into immediate poverty on retirement, nor fail to offer any aid whatsoever to those too disabled to engage in productive labor.  But now, of course, the whole lot of big entitlements are in the throes of death in the face of mass-retirements, greatly increased life-expectancy and ever-rising health care costs, along with there being only two or three workers for every retiree.  My point is that, if Republicans want to kill these programs, they have the responsibility to tell their constituents to fend for themselves until they reach the great beyond, and if Democrats want to save these programs, they have the responsibility to tell their constituents that they better be prepared to pay tax-levels that are more like Canada's now than they are like ours now.  Policies have consequences, and every voter should be accurately informed about what those consequences will be.  Any politician from either party who wants to hold those lines but promises anything inconsistent from them are ones we have the responsibility to vote against, because they're lying out of their faces about the most dangerous internal crisis our government will encounter in our lifetimes.  We're the citizens in a republic that is at the crossroads of a huge, and very consequential choice, and none of us are going to be able to make it well if we keep b-s-ing ourselves and continue to allow our elected officials help us to continue b-s-ing ourselves.

Ghost-white,
Well, like I said, in one sense, this is neither new nor surprising.  All of us, from the top to the bottom percentile of taxpayers, expect to get only the goodies that we want, and we expect only the guys in the other tax brackets to pay for them.  I suspect to a certain extent it's always been that way.  But in thread after thread after thread I see on this forum, and in conversations with all my friends of the persuasion, Democrats pretend that all our budget financing problems will be solved if we just tax the wealthy more and end our current wars, and that's just not even remotely close to being true.  It's not just some faction of the opposition party that's being short-sighted, we all are, myself included  It's human nature, or at least, at the moment, American nature.  But the point is, now, we have to knock it off--all of us have to knock it off, not just the guys on the other team.

[President Mitt]

It's already well known that Tea Partiers, as well as most Americans, are socialists when it comes to spending, and libertarians when it comes to taxes.

[Bull Moose Base]

Who ever believed Tea Party supporters cared about spending or taxes?  Maybe a small slice do but look at how unserious a candidate Gary Johnson (a two-term governor and the most fiscally conservative candidate in the field) is considered.  Tea Party supporters, they of small government, also have the highest opposition to gay marriage.  But I don't know that the wise response to being confronted with the overpowering stupidity of the public is to want to tell them the truth and hope they make an enlightened decision.  Is there any reason to think they would?  If voters won't punish candidates funded by and in the pocket of lobbyists, they won't hold dishonesty against them.  There ultimately won't be any deal on an extension of Bush tax cuts since Republicans won't agree to raise them on richest.  They'll all expire. 

[krazen1211]

It's a shame that they intentionally muddy the issue by pretending that both programs are the same and asking about them both at the same time.



We could easily slash Medicaid by $100 billion and nobody would really care except the corporate welfarists who benefit.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

It's already well known that Tea Partiers, as well as most Americans most people in Western democracies are socialists when it comes to spending, and libertarians when it comes to taxes.

Fixed for ya

[Stranger in a strange land]

Anyone surprised by this probably also wonders what the hell that fiery thing in the sky is.

It's already well known that Tea Partiers, as well as most Americans, are socialists when it comes to spending, and libertarians when it comes to taxes.

80%+ of the Tea Party rank and file are just Bush Republicans carrying horribly-spelled signs about Obama being a socialist (despite having no idea what socialism actually is) and dressed up in 18th century garb. I'm surprised it took so long for this to become obvious.