This month pundits have been talking about spending cuts. In the midst of these
discussions and debates have been many polls used by both sides to prove their point.
One side says voters want cuts in federal spending. The other side points to different
polls showing they do not want any cuts. Fortunately, pollster Scott Rasmussen stepped
into this debate and cleared up lots of confusion.

He argues that Mainstream America and our Political Class do not have a
common language. As an example, he used a recent poll by the Pew Research Center that
seemed to show that Americans do not want cuts. He points out that the raw numbers in
the Pew poll are similar to his Rasmussen poll, but they were reported differently.

For most Americans, he says, “maintaining spending at current levels would
mean spending the same amount in 2013 as we spent in 2012.” That is not what
Washington means. He says, maintaining spending at current levels “means spending
$3.5 trillion this year and $4.5 trillion in five years.” Most Americans would see this as
an increase in spending of a trillion dollars.

The Political Class would “consider spending unchanged at current levels to be a
massive spending cut.” It doesn’t allow for the trillion dollars already built into the
federal budget.

Let’s now apply this to the Pew poll. On the question about roads and
infrastructure: 38 percent want more spending and only 17 percent favor a spending cut.
But a plurality (43 percent) want to hold infrastructure spending steady. “Since the
Political Class would consider holding steady to be a cut in spending, 60 percent in the
Pew poll favors what official Washington calls cuts.”

Once you apply plain English to some of these polls, you find there is much more
support for spending cuts than is usually reported. Part of the reason is deliberate
deception. Most of the problem is that the Political Class doesn’t speak plain English.