Kyle Leighton September 7, 2011, 10:20 AM

Hey, if a hurricane hits another part of the country, that’s not your problem, right? Apparently, that view is more widely held than one might think.

In the days before Hurricane Irene ravaged the east coast, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) floated the idea that disaster aid from the federal government should be offset with spending cuts in a similar way to the GOP demands on the debt ceiling deal. The idea, though pretty consistent orthodoxy from Cantor, was loudly criticized, but Cantor doubled down. And a new poll out on Wednesday from Rasmussen shows a surprising amount of support for that very position.

The question was straightforward: “A proposal has been made to offset any federal disaster aid in response to Hurricane Irene with comparable cuts in other areas of government spending. Do you favor or oppose requiring any federal disaster relief to be offset with comparable spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget?” The answer was also fairly straightforward: the survey showed that a full 43 percent of Americans support the idea, with only 36 against it and 21 undecided.

But that may not have been the most surprising result from the Rasmussen poll on the Irene response. A second question asked whether the financial responsibility for disaster response should fall to the federal government, the local government of the area affected or the individuals. Incredibly, there was more support for sending the bill to the individuals themselves, 28 percent, than the 20 percent who thought the federal government should be responsible. 40 percent thought the local entity should take care of things.

The Rasmussen poll used automated interviews with 1,000 American adults conducted from September 3rd to the 4th, and has a sampling error of 3 percent.

Eric Cantor, FEMA, Hurricane Irene, Polls