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April 25, 2011
Politicians, Not Public, to Blame for Debt Crisis
By David Paul Kuhn
Americans are reportedly childish about the debt crisis. The public says the budget deficit is a serious issue. So serious that Americans will let other people sacrifice. Rich people. We know the enemy of U.S. debt, and it's us. You, dear reader, are framed as a hypocrite. But is that true?
Last week's Washington Post carried a familiar headline: "Poll Shows Americans oppose entitlement cuts to deal with debt problem." Bloomberg News led a December article: "Americans want Congress to bring down a federal budget deficit that many believe is ‘dangerously out of control,' only under two conditions: minimize the pain and make the rich pay." Politico recently reached for Shakespeare with its conclusion: "the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves."
But the fault may actually lie in misreading the stars (data) and how our political stars (lawmakers and pundits) misread us. Americans appear willing to make hard choices, according to a largely unnoticed but landmark study. Given the chance, the public cuts much of the deficit and saves Social Security.
The conventional wisdom is wrong not because the evidence is wrong. Polls capture a gap between how seriously Americans view the debt problem and how seriously they take it. The right questions were asked. But they were asked in the wrong way.
A budget requires choosing between the most tolerable of unwanted sacrifices. Think Otto Von Bismarck's maxim that "politics is the art of the possible." Conventional polls pose budget questions in isolation. Budget politics is reduced to what's preferable rather than what's possible among imperfect alternatives.
"It's like you are saying, would you like to have some cake? Yes. Would you like to eat your cake? Yes. Ah, they want to have their cake and eat it too!" said political psychologist Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, which conducted the study.
"The public is capable of dealing with the budget in a rational fashion," Kull continued. "When you ask one-off questions they can only react in a visceral way. No, it's not attractive to cut spending. No, it's not attractive to raise taxes. Yes, you want to balance the budget. You haven't asked them to make tradeoffs."
Kull's study asked a random sample of Americans to do precisely that. They presented adults with the discretionary budget shortfall of $625 billion by 2015, as well as shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare. Participants chose from a range of realistic options using a computer application.
The majority made Social Security solvent. They acomplished that by raising the income limit subject to the payroll tax and increasing the retirement age to at least age 68; majorities agreed to similar tweaks of Medicare eligibility and benefits.
The average respondent reduced the discretionary budget deficit by 70 percent. One third of deficit reductions came from cuts to government programs. Two-thirds came from increased taxes and adjustments to the tax code.
"People's reaction to that package may be different than their reaction to each element individually," said Michael Dimock, associate director for research at the Pew Research Center. "One element of opposition to specific proposals is the sense of unfairness. The package of solutions may give a sense of shared sacrifices that they don't see when asked about cutting Social Security and Medicare."
Indeed, when respondents were forced to consider the budget's give-and-take, even partisans confronted sacred cows. Most Republicans, including tea party sympathizers, raised some taxes. Most Democrats cut government programs and increased the retirement age...
