Tax or spend

In 2001, a survey sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Fund asked "Do you think that the country can afford a major program to provide health insurance for most uninsured Americans, which might require a tax increase to pay for it or do you think that the country can't afford a major program?"  79% said the country could afford it, while 18% said we couldn't.  This question was asked to a randomly selected half of the sample.  The other half were asked  "Do you think that the country can afford a major program to provide health insurance for most uninsured Americans, which would mean much more government spending or do you think that the country can't afford a major program?"  74% said we could and 23% said we couldn't.

The difference between the responses to the two questions isn't statistically significant at conventional levels.  But among Republicans,  72% said we could afford a program which "might require a tax increase" and only 62% said we could require a program which "would mean much more government spending."  Among Democrats and Independents, there was no difference in responses to the two questions.  The difference among Republicans only is (barely) significant at the 5% level.  This isn't overwhelmingly strong evidence, but it suggests that Republicans are more negative about "government spending" than about taxes.