Why I Wouldn't Want to be a Politician
The last 2 poll questions on the Globe and Mail website:
Should a university education be free? 50% say yes.
Given the highly misleading TD report from a couple of weeks back, should tax relief be the first priority in the upcoming federal budget? 67% say yes.
In a previous poll 40% were in favour of a child care program, despite the question being worded negatively.
And I'm guessing polls on more military spending would get a pretty big yes vote as well.
And we haven't even talked about health care yet.
I have this dream that someday people will realize that you can't have big tax cuts and big spending increases at the same time without going (further) into debt.
Which is all my way of leading up to the fact that the federal budget is coming up on February 23 and I'm not too optimistic about the prospects for my personal number one priority: maintaining a healthy budget surplus.
More to come on this as the budget approaches...
Should a university education be free? 50% say yes.
Given the highly misleading TD report from a couple of weeks back, should tax relief be the first priority in the upcoming federal budget? 67% say yes.
In a previous poll 40% were in favour of a child care program, despite the question being worded negatively.
And I'm guessing polls on more military spending would get a pretty big yes vote as well.
And we haven't even talked about health care yet.
I have this dream that someday people will realize that you can't have big tax cuts and big spending increases at the same time without going (further) into debt.
Which is all my way of leading up to the fact that the federal budget is coming up on February 23 and I'm not too optimistic about the prospects for my personal number one priority: maintaining a healthy budget surplus.
More to come on this as the budget approaches...
Labels: government debt, polls, the government we deserve
posted by Declan at
Monday, February 07, 2005
2 Comments:
The massive surpluses are budget abberations in the first place - they're "unplanned" (or so they claim). You'll see $3-4B in prudence stuffed in the budget, just like the last few years. You'll have to wait for the "surprise" surplus early next year.
By
Andrew, at 6:12 AM
What worries me is that the assumptions going into the budget will be less conservative than they have been in the past, leading to a smaller surplus, and that any surplus which does show up will be spent rather than put towards the debt (e.g. child care trust fund), and that spending will come out higher than expected in years to come (rather than lower as it has been in most recent years).
Beyond that, I'm worried that if the economy slows (say due to the high dollar) we wil be pushed back into deficit since our cushion will be smaller with all the new spending / tax cut plans.
I guess we'll see.
By
Declan, at 9:59 AM
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