An innovative survey from the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation (PPC) reveals significant differences between the budget proposed in the Trump administration’s “Budget Blueprint” for 2018 and what the public recommends. The findings were released by Voice Of the People. For the top ten areas, the gaps between the spending proposals of the majority of the public and those of the Trump administration total $137.6 billion. For Republicans these gaps are narrower totaling $86.9 billion, while for Democrats the total is $188.5 billion.
“The gaps between the public’s proposed budget and the Trump administration’s budget are quite substantial,” said PPC Director Steven Kull, who directed the survey, “especially when it comes to military spending.” Working on-line, a representative sample of more than 1800 registered voters were presented the authorized Federal budget for 2017, broken into 31 line items, and given the opportunity to make changes for 2018 as they saw fit, getting feedback as they went along about the impact of their choices on the budget deficit.
The survey was fielded March 8-16 with a national probability-based sample of 1,817 registered voters, provided by Nielsen Scarborough from its sample of respondents, recruited by mail and telephone using a random sample of households. The margin of error was +/-2.3 %.
A full chart of the spending recommendations with party breakdowns can be seen at: http://www.publicconsultation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Comparing-Budgets. pdf
