On ABC’s “This Week”, host George Stephanopoulos cherry-picked a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, and referenced yesterday’s anti-war rally, to press Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) on how to pay for New Orleans reconstruction:
“Seems like the American people disagree with you across the board. Let me show you this poll from 'USA Today'/CNN/Gallup poll. How should we pay? 54% say cut Iraq spending, 17% say raise taxes, 15% say increase the deficit. Only 6% say cut the spending you're talking about.”
This last sentence is a misrepresentation of the poll results as well as McCain’s statement. What Stephanopoulos neglected to mention is that this poll question asked, "If you had to choose, which of the following would you say would be the best way for the government to pay for the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina: increase the federal budget deficit, raise taxes, cut spending for the war in Iraq, or cut spending for domestic programs such as education and health care?"
McCain wasn’t talking about cutting education or health care. McCain was talking about cutting pork out of fat pieces of legislation like the Highway Bill:
“Look, there was $26 billion in pork in highway bill and projects that are just -- you know, they make you laugh and they make you cry and could I put a little historic perspective on it. In 1984 Ronald Reagan vetoed a highway bill that had 152 earmarks. His quote was, “I haven't seen this much pork since I gave out blue ribbons at the Iowa state fair. In this last highway bill there was 6,140 earmarks, pork barrel projects worth $26 billion. Can’t we start there? Can't we sacrifice one bike path, one horse trail, one bridge to nowhere?”
Stephanopoulos continued:
“This comes this weekend as we had this huge anti-war protest in Washington. Over 100,000 people marched on the White House yesterday so you've got a majority of Americans saying bring the troops home to pay for Katrina. We've seen polls across the board suggesting we're bogged down now in Iraq and now you have this growing protest movement. Do you believe we're reaching a tipping point in public opinion?”
Stephanopoulos was again misrepresenting the poll results in this question to McCain. 54 percent of respondents said that they would favor cutting spending for the war in Iraq to pay for the problems created by Hurricane Katrina. This is not the same as “[bringing] the troops home to pay for Katrina.” In fact, question number 13 of this same poll asked, “Which comes closest to your view about what the U.S. should now do about the number of U.S. troops in Iraq?” Only 30 percent of respondents said, “Withdraw all the troops.” This is significantly less than a majority.
Yet, there are many parts of this USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll that Stephanopoulus chose to ignore. For instance:
- 45 percent of respondents approved of Bush’s proposals concerning Katrina made in his recent speech to the nation. Only 27 percent disapproved
- 70 percent of respondents had moderate or great confidence in Bush’s ability to assist the victims of Katrina
- 59 percent of respondents had moderate or great confidence in Bush’s ability to respond to future acts of terrorism
- 68 percent of respondents had moderate or great confidence in Bush’s ability to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
- 60 percent of respondents had moderate or great confidence in the government’s ability to respond to future natural disasters
- 50 percent of respondents are concerned that the federal government is going to spend too much on Katrina reconstruction
- Only 20 percent of respondents were willing to make major sacrifices to their personal income taxes or government spending to address Katrina-related problems. By contrast, 78 percent were only willing to make minor or no sacrifices
- 60 percent of respondents favored the appointment of John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court
Finally, even though it was mentioned, this seemed to get glossed over: Only 17 percent of respondents favored raising taxes to pay for Katrina-related problems. This is quite diametric to the cascade of articles, editorials, and media reports that have been pushing for higher taxes the past few weeks as covered by NewsBusters here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
As for yesterday's anti-war rally, assuming that 100,000 indeed did attend -- which has not been confirmed -- with the American population now in excess of 290 million, this hardly represents a majority.
