The anti-government “throw-the-bums-out” crowds have had their chance to speak out on how to curtail the deficit and what to do with those hated entitlements that are the antithesis of the America they pine for. A recent WSJ/NBC News poll provided a glimpse of just how dependent on big government entitlements Americans have become–even among the Tea Party. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone watching the slow shift of the American mindset from citizen, to consumer, to ward of the State over the past century.

According to the Wall Street Journal who co-sponsored the poll, “Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was ‘unacceptable’ to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit.”

No wonder President Obama in his State of the Union speech only paid lip service to Social Security and Medicare reform, mentioning each by name only once in over 7,000 words of text. He knows what Americans are really about as summed up in the old adage: “It all depends on whose ox is being gored.”

And the poll exposes a potentially discrediting hypocrisy within the Tea Party movement who claim to be for smaller government and a return to a libertarian Nirvana. Consider: by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, self-described Tea Partiers declared significant cuts to Social Security “unacceptable.”

In fact, as the poll reveals, less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the mounting deficit about which they cry warnings of impending doom.

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When big-spending politicians in Washington pontificate about “deficit reduction,” taxpayers should be very wary. Crocodile tears about red ink almost always are a tactic that the political class uses to make tax increases more palatable. The way it works is that the crowd in DC increases spending, which leads to more red ink, which allows them to say we have a deficit crisis, which gives them an excuse to raise taxes, which then gives them more money to spend. This additional spending then leads to more debt, which provides a rationale for higher taxes, and the pattern continues – sort of a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of big government.

Fortunately, it looks like the American people have figured out this scam. By a 57-34 margin, they say that reducing federal spending should be the number-one goal of fiscal policy rather than deficit reduction. And since red ink is just a symptom of the real problem of too much spending, this data is very encouraging.

Here are some of the details from a new Rasmussen poll, which Mark Tapscott labels, “evidence of a yawning divide between the nation’s Political Class and the rest of the country on what to do about the federal government’s fiscal crisis.”

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters think reducing federal government spending is more important than reducing the deficit. Thirty-four percent (34%) put reducing the deficit first.  It’s telling to note that while 65% of Mainstream voters believe cutting spending is more important, 72% of the Political Class say the primary emphasis should be on deficit reduction. …Seventy-four percent (74%) of Republicans and 50% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties say cutting spending is more important than reducing the deficit. Democrats are more narrowly divided on the question. Most conservatives and moderates say spending cuts should come first, but most liberals say deficit reduction is paramount. Voters have consistently said in surveys for years that increased government spending hurts the economy, while decreased spending has a positive effect on the economy.

I wouldn’t read too much into the comparative data, since the “political class” in Rasmussen’s polls apparently refers to respondents with a certain set of establishment preferences rather than those living in the DC area and/or those mooching off the federal government, but the overall results are very encouraging.

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Last week, I highlighted nine ballot initiatives that were worth watching because of their policy implications and/or their role is showing whether voters wanted more or less freedom. The results, by and large, are very encouraging. Let’s take a look at the results of those nine votes, as well as a few additional key initiatives.

1. The big spenders wanted to impose an income tax in the state of Washington, and they even had support from too-rich-to-care Bill Gates. The good news is that this initiative got slaughtered by a nearly two-to-one margin.  I was worried about this initiative since crazy  Oregon voters approved higher tax rates earlier this year. In a further bit of good news, Washington voters also approved a supermajority requirement for tax increases by a similar margin.

2. Nevada voters had a chance to vote on eminent domain abuse. This is an initiative that I mischaracterized in my original post. The language made it sound like it was designed to protect private property, but it actually was proposed by the political elite to weaken a property rights initiative that the voters previously had imposed. Fortunately, Nevada voters did not share my naiveté and the effort to weaken eminent domain protections was decisively rejected.  This is important, of course, because of the Supreme Court’s reprehensible Kelo decision.

3. California voters were predictably disappointing. They rejected the initiative to legalize marijuana, thus missing an opportunity to adopt a more sensible approach to victimless crimes. The crazy voters from the Golden State also kept in place a suicidal global warming scheme that is driving jobs out of the state. The only silver lining in California’s dark cloud is that voters did approve a supermajority requirement for certain revenue increases.

4. Nearly 90 percent of voters in Kansas approved an initiative to remove any ambiguity about whether individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. Let that be a warning to those imperialist Canadians, just in case they’re plotting an invasion.

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`Left’ and `Right,’ Americans today call their political life out of joint, and therefore
painful. A news cycle cannot go by without another show of genteel hand-wringing over Tea-Party activists and radio-show callers—their rage, their seemingly endless array of `phobias,’ the menace they pose to decent people everywhere. Complementarily, Americans on the `Right’ are outraged or, more precisely, morally indignant. This has nothing to do with the thought-crimes and sentiment-felonies of racism, sexism, homophobia; rather, as seen in the recent passage of health-care legislation in the face of public opposition,, conservatives see a representative form of government that no longer, well, represents the majority of Americans.

Both sides feel a dislocation in America, a dislocation of public opinion from government.

In our Constitution “we the people” announce that we rule ourselves, through our elected representatives. But our eyes and ears tell us that our elected representatives listen not to us but to party leaders and other purveyors of elite or `advanced’ opinion, `expert’ opinion, `academic’ opinion. The Right deplores this; the Left says, `Thank God!’—or it would, if the Left did not now insist on a chaste separation of religiosity from state.

If public opinion in some form rules and thus preoccupies republican regimes, how should it rule? What is the proper relationship between citizens, their opinions, and their government?

As the designers of what Madison called the first “purely republican” regime in the modern world the American founders thought carefully about the role of public opinion in popular self-government. None thought more clearly than did Madison himself. And today, no one thinks more clearly about Madison than the Villanova University scholar, Colleen Sheehan. In her recent book, James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Sheehan she explains how Madison understood both the promise and the perils of American political life, particularly as they center on the question of public opinion.

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With this vote, the U.S. House has chosen big government over freedom; bureaucracy over people.

The American Conservative Union has opposed this bill from the start because of its massive cost and red tape. The more we learn and Americans learn about the devil in the details of this bill the more disgust among Americans will grow. Empowering IRS agents to determine if Americans have proper health care coverage is not health care reform. Raising taxes is not health care reform. Massive increases in government spending is not health care reform. Imposing fines on Americans who don’t toe the line with what the liberals want in their personal health care plans is not real health care reform.

History will indeed mark this moment – as some Americans become more dependent on government and government becomes more intrusive in the personal lives and financial decisions of its citizens. This is a moment when government growth took a giant leap toward swallowing up more and more of the hard earn money of Americans. This is a moment when common sense reform took a back seat to liberalism run amuck.

In responding to the Democrat’s claims that spending massive amounts of new money on a new government program would actually lower the deficit, the ACU notes that the Ways and Means Committee estimated Medicare would cost only $9 billion each year after 25 years but that on its 25th birthday Medicare spent $67 billion, or seven times the initial cost estimate. The pattern is consistent in federal spending and the massive health care bill’s cost will likely follow suit.

The American people are not stupid or naive.

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A new national poll finds a crisis of confidence on economic issues among Americans — and younger Americans (those 18-29) — alike.

Among the key findings, Americans and Millennials:

Are not confident in the government’s ability to handle the economic crisis. (59% of Americans;  55% of Millennials)

• Want a free market approach and oppose greater government regulation of business.  (55% of Americans; 53% of Millennials)
• Believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.  (67% of Americans; 60% of Millennials)
• Want the same set of moral standards in business life as in personal life.  (75% of Americans; 66% of Millennials)
• See business decisions based on greed as morally wrong. (74% of Americans; 77% of Millennials)
• Think their careers will be negatively impacted for the long-term by the current economic situation (55% of Americans under 65 years old; 55% of Millennials).

“A year into the Obama administration, we find that Americans — and younger Americans — are having a crisis of confidence,” says Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus, the group that commissioned the poll. “People are increasingly pessimistic about the government’s ability to handle the economic crisis and a majority believes that increased government regulation will hurt the economy.”

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This morning after our weekly conference meeting I joined other House Republican leaders at a press event to discuss President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight.  What I told the press gathered in the U.S. Capitol this morning is that tonight, President Obama needs to prove he’s listening to the American people.  It’s not the message, it’s his job-killing policies.  The President must do more than rhetorically ‘pivot.’  He must scrap his job-killing agenda and work in the bipartisan way he promised during the campaign.

The American people don’t want this government takeover of health care, and it’s time to put it out of its misery. No more tricks.  Instead of just a half-baked spending freeze, how about real budget caps that can be enforced?  And instead of more government ‘stimulus’ bills, we need real solutions to help small businesses create jobs.

Last Friday, on a visit to my home state of Ohio, the President complained about this “buzzsaw” of opposition his health care bill faced.  But what you call a buzzsaw, Mr. President, I call the American people.  They’re saying ‘enough is enough’ to this big-government, job-killing agenda.  And they’re asking “where are the jobs?”  So we’re going to listen to the President, but we’re also going to continue to hold him accountable and offer our better solutions.

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