The public isn’t too supportive of the Republican idea that disaster relief ought to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere:
When it comes to disasters, Americans have one word of advice for the federal government: spend.
A Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found 59 percent of the public doesn’t believe disaster aid should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. That includes 52 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of independents and 69 percent of Democrats.
Only 29 percent of the public wants federal disaster aid to be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.
Get a clue, Republicans.
Update: Greg Sargent notes that even Tea Party supporters don’t support offsets:
The partisan breakdown of these numbers is striking. Republicans say disaster spending does not need to be offset by 52-36. Even Republicans who agree with the Tea Party say the same thing by 49-42.
This mirrors another recent Post poll, which found that a majority of Republicans, 54 percent, disapprove of the spending cuts being imposed by sequestration, while only 39 percent of them approve.
Look, the story here is the same as always: Americans regularly tell pollsters that they favor federal spending cuts and oppose government spending in the abstract. But when the talk turns to specifics, they suddenly take a more balanced view, one that quickly jettisons the notion of austerity for its own sake. This is often true even of Republicans.
