Deficit Reduction Is Unpopular

Diane Rogers says deficit hawks should take solace from the new ABC/WashPost poll despite the strong opposition to broad-based tax hikes and to entitlement cuts:

It's the response to the poll question below–which does start to get at the possibility of compromise for the common good–that deserves more of our attention:

Only slightly over 50 percent oppose this more balanced approach which combines ("small") cuts in the major entitlement programs with "raising taxes on all Americans." This is a glass that is (almost) half full. We haven't even begun to make the full sales pitch on this "shared sacrifice" plan with more specifics about how Medicare and Social Security can be trimmed while actually strengthening the safety-net parts of those programs (reassuring the liberals), or how revenues can be raised in a progressive manner by reducing "tax entitlements" rather than merely jacking up tax rates (reassuring the conservatives).

To my eye, the important thing about that result is the preference intensity. It's not just that people are against it by 45-53, but that the "strong" opposition has 40 percent of the population and the "strong" support has just 19. And this is as it should be! Nobody wants to pay more taxes or see grandma's living standards decline. I'm resigned to the fact that at some point something along these lines will have to be done to avoid high interest rates that would also be undesirable. But at the moment, interest rates aren't high. So raising taxes now would be pointless. And cutting grandma's living standards would be pointless. And simply promising to cut Future Grandma's standard of living would be something like double-pointless.

Waste is bad, so it's always a good day to try to reduce genuine waste in Medicare if you can. But there's neither a reason of policy substance nor a reason of politics to put "grand bargain" deficit reduction at the front of the political agenda in the 112th Congress.