Thing is, dogzilla, you're in a conservative minority if you actually want to cut social security, medicare, etc (not to mention an extreme minority among Americans in general)...
Further demonstrating that self-described conservatives not only don't know what to cut, but also lack an understanding of where their money goes, the only item that even comes close to a majority (foreign aid, with 48%) only comprises 1% of the budget!
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Originally Posted by David Waldman
Defining "welfare programs" for the purposes of assessing how much of the budget is spent on them, presents some problems. Are they all "entitlement programs?" That'd be a sizable budget chunk. But how to reconcile even that with the fact that while something like 35% of conservatives say they want to cut "welfare programs," less than 10% say they'd cut "aid to the poor?" And if "welfare programs" is to include all entitlements, you're gonna have a problem with the extremely poor support among conservatives for cutting Social Security.
The bottom line is that conservatives -- probably like most Americans -- say they want at least some spending cut, but can't cobble together any serious majorities in favor of cutting anything in particular. Even foreign aid comes in below 50%, not that slashing it would help save much money, anyway. And yet, whenever there have to be cuts, the bulk of them by necessity must be those which would be extremely unpopular even among conservatives.
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