Yes, Virginia. There Is A Stupid Claus.

So, there's a bunch of polls out about the federal budget.  TPM has a wrap up.

Here's the gist of it: Americans don't know anything about the federal budget.  They think foreign aid makes up 27% of the budget.  So, naturally, they want to slash it to about 13%.  Problem is, it makes up less than 1% of the budget.  So, you know, facts and stuff...

A majority of Americans don't want to cut defense spending.  But a solid plurality thinks spending more than three times more than any other country is overkill.  Needless to say, we spend way more than three times any other country of defense.

This struck me because of something I was reading about Reagan.  Mark Summer over at Kos makes the point that Reagan's presidency represented the triumph of fiction over fact. The famous welfare queen of Reagan's mythologizing never existed.  It was a classic case of Colbert's "truthiness" in action.  Same goes for foreign aid.

Obama made a decision to punt the fight over taxes until 2012.  Part of that was because the Congressional leadership punted on it before the midterms.  Whatever.

Obama has to begin educating people - those fickle moderate voters - about where the money really goes.  Everyone wants to cut spending that does not benefit them.  I'm sure voters in Florida are incensed about LIHEAP, just as I'm incensed about corn subsidies.  But the fact is, most government programs actually enjoy wide support, so cutting them isn't really an option.

Just look at the contortions and floundering we have seen from the GOP leadership as they try and stuff the Tea Party genie back in its bottle over spending caps and austerity measures.

Ultimately, we will have to raise taxes.  We will have to get rid of the payroll tax cap for Social Security.  We will have to raise taxes on people earning more than $250,000K.  And we will also likely have to raise some taxes on people making less than that.

Tax burdens are the lowest they have been in 60 years.  Since 1950.  And then we launched the military-industrial complex and the interstate highway system and all sorts of other programs.  By 1960, the top marginal tax rate was 93%.  Eisenhower was at least a real conservative, in the sense he cared about a balanced budget.  Nowadays, being a "conservative" means opposing tax increases on anyone, even the super-rich.

Now, there is no evidence that increasing taxes on the super-rich does one damned thing to hurt the economy.

But that's just a fact.  And we live in Reagan's America.

Facts don't mean squat.