WAR: Poll: Bush's Spending Priorities Not in Line with Americans'

A recent poll has shown that many Americans are at odds with President Bush's budget. When given a change to look at the proposed budget and make changes, about two thirds of those surveys directed funds at reducing the budget deficit. The poll was taken by Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. Other areas that would be cut included defense spending as well as money earmarked for Iraq and Afghanistan operations.




The poll was a pretty small sample of only 1182 people and methodology was not revealed. However, as with any polls, the questions and how they are worded have an impact on the responses you get as well. Defense spending on research and new systems should remain a priority as they not only defend our country and its interests, but they also prime the pump in the form of civilian sector trickle downs.

WOW!


''The American public as a whole takes a fairly coherent position. They favor redirecting a portion of defense spending to deficit reduction and social spending and look for savings by cutting spending on large-scale Cold War style capabilities,'' said PIPA director Steven Kull. "


This is astounding and IMO, fairly wonderful. Talk about a mandate. WOW!


Yah yah I know it's just a small poll. But still!
.

Be kind of interesting if the government would listen to us when something like that comes up. Sorry, I'm not a rabble rouser, as it were, nor a revolutionary, but it is my considere opinion tha the government doesn't always know best.

Er ... That would be liberal as well as conservative.

ya, unfortunately they'd(the current administration) probably cut defense spending by rationing the bullets they give out to the troops!!!
SO, let's not get too eager here, okay??

Originally posted by dawnstar
ya, unfortunately they'd(the current administration) probably cut defense spending by rationing the bullets they give out to the troops!!!
SO, let's not get too eager here, okay??

I tend to agree, but man! When we talk about budgets ... We talk in terms of billions of dollars. There has to be a limit somewhere. Not to the troops, I agree, but I can't imagine that all of that is more important than people who live in poverty here in the US, people who have been unemployed long enough to fall out of the ratings and are therefore, invisible with little or no releif in sight.

We send "billions" elsewhere and are letting this country fall apart in some really needful places.

I'm sure this was a result predestined by the wording of the poll. If you ask people "would you like to reduce the deficit" I'm sure most people would answer yes. To dig deeper, you must carefully word the questions in an unbiased way.

Actually my husband works with a very hard die pro Republican crowd, and they have been concerns about the deficit and why nothing has been done to help fix it.

I guess they don't understand that you can not spend indefinitely without putting money in the pot.

[edit on 9-3-2005 by marg6043]

In the thoughtful words of Homer Simpson, "Doh!"

And what pray tell is a good number to use for RANDOM sampling? Gallup typically runs polls with about 500 samples or so. At a certain point you are only going to be decresing the margin of error by less then a percent. i think 1000 is the standered for an "Offical poll" I am not statitician. But it is interesting how some might dismiss such overwhelming margins based on low number of samples

Your mandate has left the building

Hell, just a tiny cut in the defense budget to redirect to debt and homeland use would make a significant impact. And we would still be outspending the world militarily by far.

Carburetor