Only 12% of Americans feel the sequester cuts “have had a major impact on them personally,” according to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey.
These numbers are more proof that the Obama administration, which has played politics with the sequester since the idea originated in the White House during the 2011 budget negotiations, has failed in its attempt to gin up hysteria and fear over the 2% cut in the federal budget.
The fact that Americans have not bought the White House’s and the mainstream media’s dogged sequester spin is also a win for new media outlets that have relentlessly hammered home the excesses and the frivolous studies the federal government continues to fund while trying to gin up hysteria over the sequester.
As Rasmussen Reports noted, “despite predictions that the sequester impact would grow over time, there’s no indication of that happening yet,” for “the number experiencing a major impact is basically unchanged from the weekend the sequester first took effect.”
And these numbers have not changed because new media outlets, like Breitbart News, have relentlessly written about the excesses the government continues to fund amidst the sequester.
The mainstream media, of course, has done their best to amplify the hysteria the Obama administration has tried to cause by shutting down the White House tours, depriving students from around the country on their spring breaks of the opportunity to learn about the White House and the country’s history, suspending aerial teams like the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels, and closing airport control towers.
Yet somehow, amidst all this hysteria and gloom-and-doom, the Obama administration has found the money to pay Secret Service agents-who could be staffing White House tours-to provide detail for Sasha and Malia’s vacation to a posh resort in the Bahamas. The cost of the Bahamas vacation could fund two to six weeks worth of White House tours. The federal government is also still funding Elvis Cruises and Ukranian Easter egg workshops, Star Trek parody videos, and giving millions in foreign aid to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
And new media outlets like Breitbart News, as it did by simply reporting where the Obama daughters were vacationing in the context of the White House’s attempts to cause panic over the sequester, have held the Obama administration to account.
In a previous era, when the mainstream media had more of a monopoly over the news that gets disseminated, Americans may have believed that the Obama administration, as a last resort after cutting and slashing every conceivable bit of waste, had to shut down White House tours and close airport control towers. And Americans may have become panicked into believing such cuts are impacting or would impact them personally.
But in the age of new media, Americans–when presented with facts about the actual programs the federal government continues to fund–have seen the White House’s stunts for what they are. And they are not buying the spin, no matter how hard the mainstream media tries to help.
To show how insignificant the 12% number is in a national survey, in a 2001 nationwide and scientific survey, 11% of Americans still believed Elvis may be alive.
Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,000 likely voters from March 24-25, and the margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.
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