Poll: Majority supports ending sequestration

A majority of voters are in favor of ending the limits on government spending known as sequestration, according to a survey released Monday.

The Beyond the Beltway Insights Initiative poll found 73 percent of voters want to lift in some form sequestration caps created in 2011. Forty-three percent of voters say they want sequestration to be lifted altogether and replaced with a bipartisan compromise.

{mosads}Thirty percent, meanwhile, said they would support a partial repeal of sequestration by eliminating it on the defense side of spending. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and some other Republicans have proposed this idea.

Just over a quarter of voters said sequestration should be kept in place, the survey found.

Sequestration budget caps are set to return in October when fiscal 2016 begins. The budget deal reached a year ago relieved the caps for fiscal 2014 and 2015, which ends in September. 

If the caps aren’t raised, and appropriators allocate more money beyond those limits, then automatic spending cuts could return in the next fiscal year.

The incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, Tom Price (R-Ga.), told reporters last week that he would like to keep the caps in place for fiscal 2016 but remove the firewall between defense and nondefense discretionary spending so more money can be easily transferred to the Pentagon. 

The poll surveyed 993 voters between Dec. 7 and 10 with a 3-point margin of error.