Town halls, polls reveal Americans’ deep reticence over moves to tackle deficit

Town halls, polls reveal Americans’ deep reticence over moves to tackle deficit

After a week of national preoccupation with the killing of Osama bin Laden, Washington is turning back to the seemingly intractable debate over the budget.

Raucous town halls during the Easter recess and conflicting polls made one thing abundantly clear: Despite a general desire to get the deficit under control, Americans are not interested in most of the specific proposals Congress or the White House say would be needed to accomplish the task, particularly trimming Medicare. Only two steps tend to attract broad support: eliminating subsidies to oil companies and raising taxes on the wealthy. Yet those are opposed by most Republicans.

A recent Gallup poll emphasizes the public's reticence. Seventy-one percent said they worry that Democrats won't do enough to fix the long-term deficit problem, and 62 percent said they worry that Democrats will use the deficit as an excuse to raise taxes. At the same time, about two-thirds said they worry that Republicans will cut Medicare and Social Security too much, take away protections for the poor and disadvantaged, and protect the rich at the expense of everyone else.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110510/pl_yblog_exclusive/town-halls-polls-reveal-americans-deep-reticence-over-moves-to-tackle-deficit


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Suspicions growing of Democrats re taxes on rich, Social Security and Medicare?

Unfortunately, Obama has extrended the tax cuts on rich so that's pretty clear --

Republicans, of course, the major destroyers -- always have been!!

no wonder the media will not discuss it.