Not surprising, but relevant to the national food fight we’re about to have over the debt ceiling in a few weeks. The GOP wants spending cuts (and maybe more) in return for voting to raise it and The One, I assume, is willing to acquiesce to some extent, if only to shore up his standing among independents as Campaign 2012 starts rolling. But Reid and Pelosi and their base will force a standoff by insisting that we can’t defy Keynes by touching anything before the economy recovers. If you’re wondering which side has the leverage in that argument, wonder no longer.

Sixty-four percent say they are very concerned the deficit will create hardship in the future, and another 26 percent are somewhat concerned. Just eight percent say they are not concerned.

Fifty-six percent say the deficit needs immediate action, while 38 percent say efforts to address the deficit can wait until the economy has improved. Republicans and independents were more likely to push to deal with the deficit now, while Democrats were more likely to say it can wait.

So how do Americans propose to address the deficit? By cutting programs, not raising taxes. Sixty-two percent would prefer to cut programs from which they benefit, including 81 percent of Republicans. Just 29 percent want taxes raised, including 42 percent of Democrats.

It’s not all good news: Given a choice of cutting defense spending, Social Security, or Medicare, 55 percent opted to gut the military — an ominous finding, not because it necessarily indicates poor priorities but because it suggests that the public still thinks entitlement spending is sustainable if we can only trim waste elsewhere. Not so.

Meanwhile in the same poll, and somewhat surreally given the results about the deficit, a near-majority now says we shouldn’t repeal ObamaCare. In November, 45 percent supported repeal compared to 44 percent who didn’t; today it’s 40/48. Some of that shift, I assume, comes from liberals and left-leaning independents who initially opposed the law because it wasn’t liberal enough (i.e. no public option) now lining up behind it as House Republicans go to work on it. Or maybe it’s an artifact of the sample, which favors Democrats by seven points. Either way, I’m not sure how relevant it is: Even if the numbers are accurate, the grand lesson from the Democrats’ passage of the law last year is that if you have the numbers in Congress to achieve a major legislative goal, you do it and then risk the consequences at the ballot box. Repeal may alienate some independents, but if the GOP keeps hammering its argument that this thing will inevitably be a bank-breaker, the public’s concern over spending will keep the outcry over repeal minimal. The only number that I do think is important, in fact, is 43 percent saying that job creation should be top priority compared to just 18 percent who think health care should be. That’s another grand lesson from the Pelosi Congress — voters get angry when your priorities are different from theirs — so Republicans can’t afford to get bogged down in an ultimately futile repeal fight. Chip away at it from time to time, present your own committee proposal for health-care reform, but otherwise stick to jobs. A no-brainer, I hope.