In a smart column today, Bruce Bartlett looks at why it will be so hard for politicians to cut government spending: because so many Americans who say they support cutting government programs don’t realize just how much they benefit from them.
Remember, for example, when a town hall attendee famously told his congressman to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”? Apparently that bewilderingly blinkered sentiment is hardly unique.
Mr. Bartlett produces the following chart, from a recent paper by the Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler, showing how many recipients of government benefits somehow don’t believe they’ve received any benefits:
| Percentage of Program Beneficiaries Who Report They “Have Not Used a Government Social Program” | |
| Program | “No, Have Not Used a
Government Social Program” |
| 529 or Coverdell | 64.3 |
| Home Mortgage Interest Deduction | 60.0 |
| Hope or Lifetime Learning Tax Credit | 59.6 |
| Student Loans | 53.3 |
| Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit | 51.7 |
| Earned Income Tax Credit | 47.1 |
| Social Security—Retirement & Survivors | 44.1 |
| Pell Grants | 43.1 |
| Unemployment Insurance | 43.0 |
| Veterans Benefits (other than G.I. Bill) | 41.7 |
| G.I. Bill | 40.3 |
| Medicare | 39.8 |
| Head Start | 37.2 |
| Social Security Disability | 28.7 |
| Supplemental Security Income | 28.2 |
| Medicaid | 27.8 |
| Welfare/Public Assistance | 27.4 |
| Government Subsidized Housing | 27.4 |
| Food Stamps | 25.4 |
| Source: Suzanne Mettler, “Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenge of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era,” Perspectives on Politics (September 2010): 809. | |
Pretty amazing, right?
As Mr. Bartlett notes, this kind of willful ignorance — and the political momentum for government spending cuts that it enables — can’t last forever:
No doubt, many of these people will very quickly find out who they are as soon as lobbyists start fighting the proposed cuts. Advertising, news stories, congressional testimony, and analyses from trade associations and think tanks will all be mobilized to identify, precisely, who will lose from the Republican meat ax and to make their views known. We could soon have a reverse Tea Party of laid off government workers, farmers and who knows how many other people irate at losing government benefits or government services such as post offices that will probably have to be closed.