Reply With Quote
No mention of en lement cuts. Wonder if that was even given to the participants as an option.
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.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/d...udget-deficit/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.
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/Column...icit-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.
No mention of en lement cuts. Wonder if that was even given to the participants as an option.
oops
"they cut federal highways, they cut the space program, they cut veterans' benefits. Those were the biggest areas of cuts."
space program, ok, at least temporarily, but the other two? I'm flummoxed.
The IH system is a national treasure (thanks to that raging socialist/pro-union Eisenhower) whose expansion and maintenance is subcontracted to small local businesses.
The "disconnect" between DC and non-DC is bought and paid for by UCA/VRWC.
And there's simply no way to reconnect that disconnect, because elections don't count for .
Raising taxes has to be an option along with spending cuts.
Average Americans don't need votes...
It was, I believe.
Below is the 58 page pdf file of the study.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pi..._Feb11_rpt.pdf
I just skimmed the first couple of pages, but on pages 2 & 3 it looks like what they did was separate discretionary spending from SS & M. For discretionary, respondants got to pick their own cuts & taxes. For SS, and separately for M, they were just given some different option packages and could vote "acceptable", "tolerable" or "not tolerable" on each. The report gives and explaination why they had to do it that way, and the reasons they give make sense to me. But it does create a difficult situation in trying to interpret results when respondents could only offer quan ative opinions on the discretionary spending items, and the only 800lb gorilla in the discretionary budget is defense.
"discretionary budget is defense."
defense and "national security" are so sacred, blessed and protected by the MIC priests, as to be non-discretionary (uncuttable).
This is awful and indicates to me that socialism and wealth re-distribution has infected our once proud countrymen. Don't these people understand that raising taxes on the rich is like raising taxes on themselves once they find the Entrepreneurial Spirit and become successful as well?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.
Freedom of speech costs money.
That's a Stringer_Bell speciality. He does it well.
Yes, he does.
I think he flips a coin and picks whether to sacasm or post a real opinion.
Entertaining to ferret out which is which.
this was supposed to be how democracy was going to work.
the people in congress are supposed to be "representative" of the average american.
heh.
"democracy was going to work."
The Repugs and conservatives, with passive complacency by the Dems, have broken the political system, and they aren't finished yet. eg, Wisconsin's gov is during Kock Bros bidding by killing union labor, aided by the economy destroyed by the financial sector.
Cheer up, the war of the wealthy on the non-wealthy isn't over yet, it's unstoppable, and unwinnable by the non-wealthy.
Democracy does work - the representatives give us exactly what we want.
The people clammer for more public spending and less taxation; and that's what we get. We reelect congressmen who bring home the pork. People in the study were willing to cut defense, but were they asked to close a base in their home town? People raised taxes, from what I can tell, mostly on those who make more than themselves. They would cut highway spending, but would they allow a bridge near their home to crumble, or would they demand Congress fix it?
This democracy is failing economically for exactly the reason De Toqueville predicted it would.
The government should have been limited in its scope and spread; never giving the people the power to direct it to get in over our collective heads.
Too late.
I live in a small town in Pa. Through years of contractual raises and union control, a kindergarten teacher, just out of college, beginning in 2014, will make $80,000, have a $200 deductible medical plan for herself and her family, with no premium contribution, as well as a guaranteed pension at 90% of her salary if she works just 30 years! Oh, yeah, and three months in the summer, fall, spring and Christmas breaks, as well as three weeks sick leave (ac ulates and paid back) each year.
The problem is NOT what is going on in Wisconson right now. This has gotten bat- crazy. Public employees should have NEVER been given the right to collectively bargain. Even FDR recognized this very simple to understand fact.
"representatives give us exactly what we want."
You Lie
Congress gives the corps and capitalists exactly what they want, while getting their fat back scratched in return.
Citizens are disenfranchised, and the extreme radical VRWC-selected SCOTUS has increased the disenfranchisement towards totality with Citizens United.
As noted in another thread, the majority of income and wealth in this country goes to a vanishingly small minority, who could, if they collectively chose, retire the entire federal debt and still have money left over.
I see little problem in increasing the overall burden of running the country to those who are benefitting most from our form of government and market system.
right-wingers here always like to fail to mention that nearly all the deficit now and for the next 10 years is due to Repug tax cuts, Repugs bogus/botched wars, and the Banksters' Great Depression.
NOT due to medicare, medicaid, unions, teachers, Welfare Queens, illegal immigrants, abortions, socialism, etc, etc, blah blah blah.
Soc Sec has been raided by the govt to cover deficits. That's not SS fault, and not SS payers' fault.
People whose combined wealth is over $13,000,000,000,000?
Really?
Show me.
That's like saying people's burdensome personal debt is due to the fact that they don't earn enough, rather than they buy things they cannot afford.
(below copied and pasted from other thread)
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/The Outstanding Public Debt as of 16 Feb 2011 at 07:26:21 PM GMT is:
($14.1Tr)
Care to try that again?
(end copy paste, begin edit to add in links from wikipedia entry to see what the claims were based on)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_..._United_States
1.^ a b c d e f "US Federal Reserve on wealth distribution in the United States". http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/o...on.2001.10.pdf. Retrieved 2006-07-12.
2.^ a b "Americans' net worth up for 3rd straight quarter". U.S. Federal Reserve. 2010-03-11. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/...i/us_net_worth. Retrieved 2010-03-11. [dead link]
3.^ a b c d e f Growing Wealth, Inequality, and Housing in the United States. Zhu Xiao Di. Feb. 2007. Joint Center for Housing Studies.
4.^ Wealth Inequality: Data and Models. Marc Cagetti and Mariacristina De Nardi. Aug. 2005. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Here is something a bit better:
Current household balance sheet from the Fed, as of 3Q 2010
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releas...rent/z1r-5.pdf
(edit)
Seems wikipedia entry could have been worded better.
54.891Tr = net household worth of US
87% of that would be 47Tr.
How could you get rid of that without severely impacting freedom/liberty?
Do you consider it as a bottom-level collusion?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
