{"id":2305,"date":"2010-06-29T16:11:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T20:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2010-06-29T16:13:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-29T20:13:33","slug":"states-like-new-york-should-stop-spending-but-shouldnt-cut-any-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/06\/29\/states-like-new-york-should-stop-spending-but-shouldnt-cut-any-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"States like New York should stop spending. But shouldn’t cut any programs."},"content":{"rendered":"

Pew’s new poll on state government spending<\/a> offers some interesting new snapshots of the public attitude on spending and the deficit.<\/p>\n

Here are some takeaways.<\/p>\n

Most Americans don’t want the Federal government to spend any more money to help bail out cash-strapped states and local governments.<\/p>\n

So there you go, Albany.\u00a0\u00a0 We’re on our own.<\/p>\n

But when asked about cutting specific government services offered by state and local agencies most Americans said No and Hell no.<\/p>\n

73% of Americans — a whopping majority — don’t want any state cuts to K-12 education.<\/p>\n

71% don’t want any state cuts to police, fire or other public safety departments, either.<\/p>\n

Okay, so how about health care?\u00a0 There’s been so much conservative rhetoric about “socialist” government spending on health programs.\u00a0 Surely we’re willing to lay off a few doctors and nurses.<\/p>\n

Nope.\u00a0 65% say states and local governments should keep providing all their current health programs.<\/p>\n

The closest thing to a majority of support for cuts — and this surprised me — was 43% backing for cutting road and transportation spending.<\/p>\n

I thought Americans liked infrastructure investment…<\/p>\n

But even there, half of Americans were opposed to cuts.<\/p>\n

If the Feds aren’t going to help out and states can’t cut anything, that leaves taxes — right?\u00a0 Wrong.<\/p>\n

58% of Americans said no to the idea of raising taxes.<\/p>\n

So here’s our quandary in a nutshell– and the reason I think it’s a dodge to blame our current fiscal mess on politicians in Albany and Washington.<\/p>\n

Americans want big government.\u00a0 They love big government.\u00a0 So long as it comes free, or at bargain-basement prices.\u00a0 But I think it’s clear that the bill is coming due.<\/p>\n

Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pew’s new poll on state government spending offers some interesting new snapshots of the public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2306,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions\/2306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}