Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (608424)	4/20/2011 4:11:59 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576422

Wingers must be worried.......even Newsmax is carrying the poll. Ryan's 15 minutes are almost up. WashPost/ABC Poll: Americans Don't Want to Change Medicare, Medicaid newsmax.com

To: Alighieri who wrote (608424)	4/20/2011 4:16:10 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576422

The people want the impossible Today the Washington Post has new poll numbers on what the great American people (that's you, or some of you) think we ought to do to tackle this deficit-debt problem. The answer is, not much. By which I mean: the Post asked people, okay, to reduce the debt would you support cutting Medicare or military spending; increasing taxes a little bit on all payers and executing modest entitlement cuts; raising taxes on the upper brackets. The only one that scored more than 50% - in fact, 72% - was raising taxes on the wealthy. To a liberal this is gratifying to some extent. I'm glad to see that cutting Medicare scored only 21%. Cutting Medicaid scored just 30%. People like these things the way they are, more or less. But the global view, of course, is that the people don't have the answer and don't have a realistic grasp of what has to be done. I think most folks believe that this really can be fixed by cutting out " the ever-famous waste and fraud" but that's a chimera. What does this mean for Obama and for the GOP? Obviously, these numbers are worse for Paul Ryan than for Obama, because the thing he most wants to do (cut Medicare) is the least popular, while the thing the GOP most opposes (raising taxes on the wealthy) has the highest level of support. But public opinion and Beltway opinion are two different things. If the Post polled, say, 2,000 experts inside the Beltway, support for cutting Medicare would probably be above 50% and for raising taxes on the wealthy somewhere around 50%. Those numbers, which I admit I made up but trust me are about right, are going to be as important as what the people think, alas maybe more important, because they will create the echo-chamber in which this debate is carried out. guardian.co.uk