U.S. public favors more spending on education

On other issues: Most Americans in the poll favored increased spending for assistance to the poor (64 percent), developing alternative energy sources (62 percent), improving the nation’s health (61 percent), reducing the crime rate (59 percent), improving the environment (57 percent), and dealing with drug addiction (56 percent).

Despite all this support for increasing spending, the survey found that 52 percent of Americans believed their own federal income taxes last year were too high, 46 percent said about right, and just 3 percent said too low.

Taxes are a sore point in efforts to strike a deficit-reduction deal on Capitol Hill. The president insists any new package must contain a mix of spending cuts and new revenues from limiting tax deductions benefiting the wealthy. Republicans, especially those who control the House, adamantly oppose new taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Of the 23 categories in the survey, only five received negative scores: foreign aid (-60.4), welfare (-28.5), assistance to big cities (-23.4), space exploration (-9.0), and defense spending (-6.3)

If the people participating in the survey were to make federal budget decisions, those five programs presumably would be the only ones to see their spending slashed. The other 18 would get more money.

Those surveyed last year also wanted more government spending on nonwelfare assistance to the poor (+53.8), fighting crime (+51.9), Social Security (+47.6), health programs (+46.3), protecting the environment (+45.9), drug rehabilitation (+43.5), highways and bridges (+29.9), solving problems of big cities (+24.1), and improving the condition of blacks (+21).

“The net numbers have always been positive, meaning they want to spend more on things. And the vast majority of them are things that are pretty good: education, health, highways,” Smith said in an interview. “The average—when asked about specific programs—is pro-government spending and always has been. It’s gone up and down as to how pro they are. The pro-spending edge is a little weaker now than it was at its peak.”

Some changes in national priorities are generationally driven, and the aging of baby boomers is an important factor as more and more retire.

“The retirees generally think things are about right. Pre-retirees are the group most likely to say [spending on Social Security] is too low. And the youngest generation is the least concerned about putting money into Social Security,” Smith said.

The results favoring more education spending and assistance to the poor come as the federal Education Department is losing more than $1 billion in funding as a result of the sequester—cuts that disproportionally will affect poor and disadvantaged students served by programs such as Title I. The survey was administered last year, however, long before the sequester became reality.

The General Social Survey is conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago with principal funding from the National Science Foundation. Data were collected between March and early September 2012 in face-to-face interviews with 1,974 randomly selected U.S. adults. The margin of sampling error varies for questions within the survey, but for most, it is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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