Americans want defence cut, not social programs

The Huffington Post:

Americans have been asking themselves this question this year, if the latest polling from The New York Times and CBS News is any indication. The pollsters were interested in Americans' feelings about whether and how to cut the national budget. The results show that when forced to pick from among various big-ticket government programs, people in the U.S. very clearly prefer cuts to military budgets before items like Social Security and Medicare. Here's the percentages of people who favored cuts in various programs:

•military spending: 55 percent
•Medicare: 21 percent
•Social Security: 13 percent

Here's how they'd prefer to do it, too:

•Reduce troops in Europe/Asia: 55 percent
•Eliminate weapons programs 19 percent
•Reduce pay of veterans: 12 percent
•Reduce size of military branches: 7 percent

In other words, if Congress forced the American people to choose how to cut spending, Americans would choose to save money by bringing troops home. If policymakers really wanted to play it safe, they'd start by cutting funds intended to be used to deploy troops to Afghanistan. A whopping 63 percent of Americans now say they oppose that particular war, making it the perfect place to cut first.

It's been almost a year since President Obama launched his escalated military campaign, and we've seen no progress towards our strategic goals in the region. If our policymakers were really serious about cutting wasteful government spending, they'd start with this war that's not making us safer and not worth the costs. Significant troop reductions from Afghanistan this year would not only bring down the deficit in the long run, but also would give the American people what they've been asking for for months: an end to this brutal, futile war.

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