Americans: If You’re Going to Cut, Cut Military Spending, Not Safety Nets

Robert Greenwald points out:

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