RandomGuy
02-17-2011, 10:16 AM
Unsurprisingly, most Americans appear to be realistic about what needs to be done. Yet another example of the disconnect between Congress and what any reasonable grown up would do.
About 800 Americans across the country were asked their opinions on how to solve the U.S. budget deficit. The results did make a substantial dent in the debt.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/17/am-how-everyday-americans-would-tackle-the-budget-deficit/
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner goes before the Senate Banking Committee today to talk about the president's 2012 budget proposal. Maybe politicians would do better to leave the budget up to more average folk. Because when presented with the budget in some detail, most respondents of a University of Maryland study were able to reduce the deficit.
Researcher Steven Kull heads up Maryland's Program for Public Consultation. Thanks for being with us.
STEVE KULL: My pleasure.
CHIOTAKIS: You asked everyday people to solve the budget deficit, which isn't an easy task. What did you find?
KULL: It was really quite extraordinary. We presented a representative sample of Americans -- about 800 Americans -- the federal budget broken down into 31 areas and said, you can increase or decrease it as you see fit. And they were able to substantially cut the spending levels by about $146 billion. We also went through revenues, income taxes, corporate taxes, and they did actually increase revenues by, on average, $292 billion. So they did make a substantial dent in the budget deficit.
CHIOTAKIS: Give us specifics. You mentioned some taxes went up and a lot of spending went down. What kind of solutions did people come up with?
KULL: Well the biggest cut that they made was to defense spending, which they cut just over $100 billion. They also cut intelligence, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They cut federal highways, they cut the space program, they cut veterans' benefits. Those were the biggest areas of cuts. They actually increased a few areas, too: job training, the environment, education.
CHIOTAKIS: What about politics? Any deference toward politics in this?
KULL: It's not really what you'd expect. The Independents did the best -- they made the biggest cuts and they made the biggest increases. That was followed by the Democrats. And the Republicans had the least cuts in spending and the least increases in taxes.
CHIOTAKIS: Why is it so tough for people in Washington to do this, to make this work?
KULL: Within Washington, there's such a battle between all these forces. But if you give the average American time to just sit down, say OK, here's the problem, people can think in a holistic way. And they don't just think in terms of their own interests. They really were thinking about what's really necessary for the country as a whole.
CHIOTAKIS: Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland. Thank you.
KULL: You're welcome.
----------------------------------------------------
Here is a bit more of a breakdown in a different article:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/02/11/Voters-Agree-on-Deficit-Cuts.aspx
Among the most notable results of the exercise:
On average, respondents cut spending and raised taxes, regardless of party affiliation
Overall, the voters in the study cut the hypothetical 2015 budget deficit by 70 percent, with one third of the reduction ($145 billion) coming from spending cuts and two thirds ($291 billion) from revenue hikes. According to stereotype, Democrats should have cut spending the least and Republicans the most, with independents somewhere in between. But that’s not how it played out.
Republicans actually cut spending the least ($100 billion).
Democrats cut spending far more than Republicans ($157 billion).
Independents cut more than either ($195 billion).
On average, residents of blue districts cut spending more than residents of red districts ($153 billion to $141 billion).
There was broad agreement on what programs to cut, what to increase and what to hold constant. Presented with 31 categories in the discretionary budget, members of both parties and independents agreed on how to handle 22.
All agreed, for example, to cut funding for defense, the State Department and the highway system.
All agreed to increase job training, education and foreign humanitarian assistance.
Spending decisions split along party lines on categories that included homeland security (only Republicans favored an increase) and mass transit (only Republicans wanted a reduction).
People favored raising taxes on the rich. Most polls find that Americans prefer to shrink the deficit by cutting spending rather than raising taxes. When actually presented with realistic budget choices, however, participants in the study (even Republicans) were willing to raise taxes. More than 90 percent of respondents included tax hikes in their budget plans, mostly in the form of higher effective tax rates on households with incomes over $100,000. Once again, the breakdown defied expectations.
While Democrats were most inclined to raise individual income taxes (on average they’d raise $178 billion), Republicans and strong Tea Party sympathizers were also willing to lift income taxes significantly ($125 billion and $105 billion, respectively).
While respondents tended to support raising income taxes on people in higher tax brackets than their own, they were surprisingly willing to accept an increase in their own bracket as well.
Increasing payroll taxes on high wage earners was the most popular tactic for closing the Social Security funding gap.
Why are the results of this study so at odds with the results of most polls? The key distinction seems to be the information at hand for the respondents. As noted by my Fiscal Times colleague Bruce Bartlett, most voters know little about government spending. They tend to underestimate defense spending (five times the amount any other country spends), for example, and grossly overestimate the amount going to foreign aid (about 1 percent). Asked to make choices with realistic budget information at hand, it’s interesting that the average voter in the Maryland study arrived at a solution closer to the National Commission’s and Center for Policy Priority bipartisan plans than their own political party’s platform.
Of course it is still the largely uninformed voters that lawmakers have to answer to on Election Day. Still, it’s hard not to feel somewhat cheered by the results of this study. Congress may be a polarized place on fiscal policy. But America, given the right information, doesn’t have to be.
About 800 Americans across the country were asked their opinions on how to solve the U.S. budget deficit. The results did make a substantial dent in the debt.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/17/am-how-everyday-americans-would-tackle-the-budget-deficit/
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner goes before the Senate Banking Committee today to talk about the president's 2012 budget proposal. Maybe politicians would do better to leave the budget up to more average folk. Because when presented with the budget in some detail, most respondents of a University of Maryland study were able to reduce the deficit.
Researcher Steven Kull heads up Maryland's Program for Public Consultation. Thanks for being with us.
STEVE KULL: My pleasure.
CHIOTAKIS: You asked everyday people to solve the budget deficit, which isn't an easy task. What did you find?
KULL: It was really quite extraordinary. We presented a representative sample of Americans -- about 800 Americans -- the federal budget broken down into 31 areas and said, you can increase or decrease it as you see fit. And they were able to substantially cut the spending levels by about $146 billion. We also went through revenues, income taxes, corporate taxes, and they did actually increase revenues by, on average, $292 billion. So they did make a substantial dent in the budget deficit.
CHIOTAKIS: Give us specifics. You mentioned some taxes went up and a lot of spending went down. What kind of solutions did people come up with?
KULL: Well the biggest cut that they made was to defense spending, which they cut just over $100 billion. They also cut intelligence, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They cut federal highways, they cut the space program, they cut veterans' benefits. Those were the biggest areas of cuts. They actually increased a few areas, too: job training, the environment, education.
CHIOTAKIS: What about politics? Any deference toward politics in this?
KULL: It's not really what you'd expect. The Independents did the best -- they made the biggest cuts and they made the biggest increases. That was followed by the Democrats. And the Republicans had the least cuts in spending and the least increases in taxes.
CHIOTAKIS: Why is it so tough for people in Washington to do this, to make this work?
KULL: Within Washington, there's such a battle between all these forces. But if you give the average American time to just sit down, say OK, here's the problem, people can think in a holistic way. And they don't just think in terms of their own interests. They really were thinking about what's really necessary for the country as a whole.
CHIOTAKIS: Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland. Thank you.
KULL: You're welcome.
----------------------------------------------------
Here is a bit more of a breakdown in a different article:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/02/11/Voters-Agree-on-Deficit-Cuts.aspx
Among the most notable results of the exercise:
On average, respondents cut spending and raised taxes, regardless of party affiliation
Overall, the voters in the study cut the hypothetical 2015 budget deficit by 70 percent, with one third of the reduction ($145 billion) coming from spending cuts and two thirds ($291 billion) from revenue hikes. According to stereotype, Democrats should have cut spending the least and Republicans the most, with independents somewhere in between. But that’s not how it played out.
Republicans actually cut spending the least ($100 billion).
Democrats cut spending far more than Republicans ($157 billion).
Independents cut more than either ($195 billion).
On average, residents of blue districts cut spending more than residents of red districts ($153 billion to $141 billion).
There was broad agreement on what programs to cut, what to increase and what to hold constant. Presented with 31 categories in the discretionary budget, members of both parties and independents agreed on how to handle 22.
All agreed, for example, to cut funding for defense, the State Department and the highway system.
All agreed to increase job training, education and foreign humanitarian assistance.
Spending decisions split along party lines on categories that included homeland security (only Republicans favored an increase) and mass transit (only Republicans wanted a reduction).
People favored raising taxes on the rich. Most polls find that Americans prefer to shrink the deficit by cutting spending rather than raising taxes. When actually presented with realistic budget choices, however, participants in the study (even Republicans) were willing to raise taxes. More than 90 percent of respondents included tax hikes in their budget plans, mostly in the form of higher effective tax rates on households with incomes over $100,000. Once again, the breakdown defied expectations.
While Democrats were most inclined to raise individual income taxes (on average they’d raise $178 billion), Republicans and strong Tea Party sympathizers were also willing to lift income taxes significantly ($125 billion and $105 billion, respectively).
While respondents tended to support raising income taxes on people in higher tax brackets than their own, they were surprisingly willing to accept an increase in their own bracket as well.
Increasing payroll taxes on high wage earners was the most popular tactic for closing the Social Security funding gap.
Why are the results of this study so at odds with the results of most polls? The key distinction seems to be the information at hand for the respondents. As noted by my Fiscal Times colleague Bruce Bartlett, most voters know little about government spending. They tend to underestimate defense spending (five times the amount any other country spends), for example, and grossly overestimate the amount going to foreign aid (about 1 percent). Asked to make choices with realistic budget information at hand, it’s interesting that the average voter in the Maryland study arrived at a solution closer to the National Commission’s and Center for Policy Priority bipartisan plans than their own political party’s platform.
Of course it is still the largely uninformed voters that lawmakers have to answer to on Election Day. Still, it’s hard not to feel somewhat cheered by the results of this study. Congress may be a polarized place on fiscal policy. But America, given the right information, doesn’t have to be.