Do Americans really want to trim the budget deficit?

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last updated 8 January 2015

Americans want to reduce the federal deficit — the trouble is, they can't agree on how to do it. According to a new Economist/YouGov poll, people would much rather balance the budget by cutting spending (62 percent) than by raising taxes (5 percent). But there is very little agreement on what programs to cut. Everyone likes the idea of bringing down the deficit, but will we ever come to a consensus on how to do it?

Nobody likes tax hikes, but they're the only solution: It's easy to say you want to balance the budget by cutting spending, says Annie Lowrey in The Washington Independent. But "the most expendable programs, according to poll takers, were mass transit, housing, agriculture, environment, and foreign aid," which together only account for 3 percent of the federal budget. Tax hikes are the only realistic solution.

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This is a very American problem: If there's any "unified desire to the American people as a cohesive entity," says Peter Suderman in Reason, it's that they want "an impossible combination of low taxes and comforting government-guaranteed entitlements." People don't really know what they'll have to give up to balance the budget, because they don't know where their tax money really goes. As a result, reducing the deficit "will be extremely difficult."

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