On spending, conservatives are quite conflicted
The government spends too much! Except when it comes to schools and infrastructure and Social Security and ...
Conservatives agree that the government spends too much. But ask them what to cut ...
At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty called on the attendees to imitate the wife of Tiger Woods: "We should take a page out of her playbook and take a nine iron and smash the window out of big government in this country."
But there’s a problem for Pawlenty and the activists who cheered him: Rank-and-file conservatives actually like big government.
In 2008, the American National Election Study asked a national sample whether federal spending on 12 different programs should be increased, decreased or kept about the same.
As the graph above illustrates, the respondents who identified themselves as "conservative" or "extremely conservative" had little appetite for specific spending cuts.
Very few conservatives said they favored reducing (or cutting out altogether) spending on any program. The least popular program proved to be childcare -- with a grand total of 20 percent of conservatives saying they’d slash it. The most popular is highways; only 6 percent want to cut spending there. Even bugaboos like welfare and foreign aid fare well, attracting the ire of only 15 percent of conservatives. Amazingly, the survey found that, on average, 54 percent of them actually wanted to increase spending.
Political scientist James Stimson has suggested that a fifth of the country consists of what he calls "conflicted conservatives," those who might respond positively to a broad appeal like Pawlenty’s, but not once specific windows start getting smashed.
John McCain(R-AZ) spins lots of big lies for a guy that has sold himself as the model of integrity, McCain: Obama Suspended His Campaign Too!
In fact, of course, McCain returned to Washington of his own volition. And in an interview with TPM today outside the Senate chamber, McCain acknowledged as much -- but also appeared to try to drag Obama into the mess.
"[Bush] didn't ask me to suspend my campaign," said McCain. "I suspended my campaign -- as did Senator Obama -- to come back to Washington because the President had told me that we were in a world financial collapse. That's why I did what I did. I always said that consistently."
It's true that Obama went to Washington to join McCain, Bush, and congressional leaders for a White House meeting on the crisis, which, according to multiple accounts, was engineered by McCain. But unlike McCain, Obama never announced he was suspending his campaign. Quite the opposite, in fact: After McCain's announcement, Obama said he still planned to show up for the presidential debate that Friday, arguing that a president needed to be able to do two things at once.
Asked whether he remembered things the way McCain did, Steve Hildebrand, who ran the Obama campaign's field operation, told TPM: "Nope. We proceeded directly ahead, pointing out along the way that McCain was incapable of doing two things at once."
As for his own decision, McCain acknowledged to TPM that he may have given the Republic a different impression about the role Bush played in it. "If I mischaracterized it, or misstated, fine," he continued. "But I have consistently said, ever since the beginning, at the time, that I was coming back because I was told by the President of the United States that we were on the verge of a financial crisis."
Yesterday, Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the senator, told us the Republic had mischaracterized McCain's comments in the interview. She said that McCain had in fact told the paper only that President Bush had called McCain while the senator was campaigning, to inform him about the crisis -- not that Bush had "called him in off the campaign trail."
Health Care No Stranger To Reconciliation Process
A History Of Reconciliation
For 30 years, major changes to health care laws have passed via the budget reconciliation process. Here are a few examples:
1982 — TEFRA: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act first opened Medicare to HMOs
1986 — COBRA: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act allowed people who were laid off to keep their health coverage, and stopped hospitals from dumping ER patients unable to pay for their care
1987 — OBRA '87: Added nursing home protection rules to Medicare and Medicaid, created no-fault vaccine injury compensation program
1989 — OBRA '89: Overhauled doctor payment system for Medicare, created new federal agency on research and quality of care
1990 — OBRA '90: Added cancer screenings to Medicare, required providers to notify patients about advance directives and living wills, expanded Medicaid to all kids living below poverty level, required drug companies to provide discounts to Medicaid
1993 — OBRA '93: created federal vaccine funding for all children
1996 — Welfare Reform: Separated Medicaid from welfare
1997 — BBA: The Balanced Budget Act created the state-federal childrens' health program called CHIP
2005 — DRA: The Deficit Reduction Act reduced Medicaid spending, allowed parents of disabled children to buy into Medicaid
