Americans don't really want spending cuts

Washington remains hyper-focused on slashing the deficit. But across the country, voters oppose even minor cuts to the federal government's largest programs

Paul Brandus

The sound of metal on asphalt is becoming painfully familiar to many Americans. It's the sound of the can being kicked down the road by our feckless lawmakers. The latest can to be booted, of course, is that $1.2 trillion in debt reduction the super committee was supposed to have come up with by Thanksgiving. Now, supposedly, an automatic budget ax will drop in a year, cutting $600 billion from defense and $600 billion from domestic spending, most of the latter portion from Medicare.

The less-than-surprising inability of the overhyped super committee to accomplish anything set off the usual snarky headlines and contemptuous utterances from the commentariat. Super failure, some sneered. Why can't our politicians do what the voters sent them to Washington to do?

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Paul Brandus

An award-winning member of the White House press corps, Paul Brandus founded WestWingReports.com (@WestWingReport) and provides reports for media outlets around the United States and overseas. His career spans network television, Wall Street, and several years as a foreign correspondent based in Moscow, where he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for NBC Radio and the award-winning business and economics program Marketplace. He has traveled to 53 countries on five continents and has reported from, among other places, Iraq, Chechnya, China, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.