{"id":11365,"date":"2010-03-24T18:03:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T18:03:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-03-24T18:11:22","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T18:11:22","slug":"californians-do-not-support-austerity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/24\/californians-do-not-support-austerity\/","title":{"rendered":"Californians Do Not Support Austerity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Field Poll couldn’t be any clearer about it if they tried: Californians simply do not support budget cuts<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Public schools: 79% oppose cuts, 20% favor cuts
\n
Public assistance for elderly and disabled: 77-21
\n
Health care for low-income and poor: 71-26
\n
Higher education: 70-28
\n
Law enforcement: 67-31
\n
Mental health: 65-31
\n
Child care: 59-38
\n
Welfare: 57-40<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only two cuts a majority supported making were to prisons and parks.<\/p>\n

Now, the Field Poll has limited utility, because it didn’t ask if voters would support new revenues to prevent these cuts. But we know from the January PPIC poll<\/a> that the answer is a resounding yes<\/strong> – with nearly 70% of voters saying they supported new revenues to fund public schools in particular. That seems to confirm the basic view that Californians are not enthused by these specific spending cuts and would support avoiding them by raising new revenues, though the method of generating new revenue certainly matters.<\/p>\n

These kind of specific polls are more effective at gauging public opinion than asking a broad “do you support cuts or taxes?” questions, since state budgeting involves making these kinds of decisions about cutting specific programs.<\/p>\n

Not everyone thinks this poll reveals sound decision-making. John Myers of KQED points out that voters would still be $6 billion short<\/a> if their preferences in the Field Poll were actually used to close the gap:<\/p>\n

And here’s the problem: today’s survey doesn’t cut it. In fact, even if your staff takes these suggestions to their most extreme, you’re still only agreeing to solutions that – at very most – would erase $14 billion of the state $20 billion budget gap.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s an entertaining read, but what it actually reveals are the limitations of the Field Poll. To get a true sense of voter attitudes on the budget, Field needs to ask the PPIC questions about whether taxes or cuts are preferred for specific programs. And someone needs to ask about Oregon-style taxation<\/a>, which apparently has been written out of the story by the state’s pollsters, press and politicians like Thomas Jefferson in a Texas textbook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Field Poll couldn’t be any clearer about it if they tried: Californians simply do not support budget cuts<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Public schools: 79% oppose cuts, 20% favor cuts
\n
Public assistance for elderly and disabled: 77-21
\n
Health care for low-income and poor: 71-26
\n
Higher education: 70-28
\n
Law enforcement: 67-31
\n
Mental health: 65-31
\n
Child care: 59-38
\n
Welfare: 57-40<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only two cuts a majority supported making were to prisons and parks.<\/p>\n

Now, the Field Poll has limited utility, because it didn’t ask if voters would support new revenues to prevent these cuts. But we know from the January PPIC poll<\/a> that the answer is a resounding yes<\/strong> – with nearly 70% of voters saying they supported new revenues to fund public schools in particular. That seems to confirm the basic view that Californians are not enthused by these specific spending cuts and would support avoiding them by raising new revenues, though the method of generating new revenue certainly matters.<\/p>\n

These kind of specific polls are more effective at gauging public opinion than asking a broad “do you support cuts or taxes?” questions, since state budgeting involves making these kinds of decisions about cutting specific programs.<\/p>\n

Not everyone thinks this poll reveals sound decision-making. John Myers of KQED points out that voters would still be $6 billion short<\/a> if their preferences in the Field Poll were actually used to close the gap:<\/p>\n

And here’s the problem: today’s survey doesn’t cut it. In fact, even if your staff takes these suggestions to their most extreme, you’re still only agreeing to solutions that – at very most – would erase $14 billion of the state $20 billion budget gap.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s an entertaining read, but what it actually reveals are the limitations of the Field Poll. To get a true sense of voter attitudes on the budget, Field needs to ask the PPIC questions about whether taxes or cuts are preferred for specific programs. And someone needs to ask about Oregon-style taxation<\/a>, which apparently has been written out of the story by the state’s pollsters, press and politicians like Thomas Jefferson in a Texas textbook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Xj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}