Another poll — this one a Harris Poll — yields the same conclusion; that while people might say, "We want massive cuts in government spending," when you ask them what they'd cut, they can only point to Foreign Aid and a few trivial nuggets of saving, nothing substantial. In fact, if this poll is correct, America is less willing to do without things we expect from the government than it has been in a long time.
I see a couple of online pundits making a point lately that I think is probably valid. Republicans aren't really interested in deficit reduction. They've taken too many things (like anything resembling a tax hike on wealthier folks) off the table to do anything real about the imbalance. Saying we have a debt crisis is just their way of trying to force cuts in Liberal-type programs like NPR and certain regulatory agencies that they'd want eliminated even if we were flush with cash. And Democrats aren't all that interested in deficit reduction, either. They just say they are so they don't get blamed as much for the growing deficit. So we get a lot of posturing and very little cutting. And that's probably all we're going to get for quite some time.