Polling Critic #49 - American People Prioritize Budgets Better than Leaders

American People Prioritize Budgets Better than Leaders ~ #49
By Alan F. Kay, PhD
© 2005, (fair use with attribution and copy to author)
May 5, 2005

ATI #13 survey, The Peace Dividend as the Public Sees It, as we will see, began the propulsion of public-interest polling to a new level. First some background. The nine presidents successively in office during the 42 Cold War years 1947-1989, justified large U.S. military budgets, way above pre-WWII levels, as necessary to "deal with," "stave off," "prevail over," "confront," or "deter" the Soviet threat. Based on these justifications, the nine spent in total over a trillion dollars in the anti-Soviet effort. Following their rhetoric and their actions, when the Cold War ended, much of the subsequent Fiscal Year 1991 (FY 91) military budget would have had to be cut back as no longer needed. In early 1990, this cut was labeled "the peace dividend."

Ignoring this logic, President George H.W. Bush was asking for a military budget of $300 billion essentially unchanged from the previous year. Discussion of a peace dividend rapidly died. Both Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and his boss made it clear: "The peace dividend is peace," period.

Survey #13 was designed to get the public's view on the military budget, without using the possibly biased phrase, "peace dividend" and without asymmetry in the question of whether the military budget should be increased, cut, or kept the same. Those who wanted to cut or increase the military budget were asked, "By how much?" Those "not sure" were prompted with, "If you had to choose between increasing or decreasing, which would you choose?" The result was 69% of the public favored some cut. Their cuts averaged $78.2 billion. For nearly 30% of the public, the desired cut was more than $100 billion. By contrast, the average increase by the 25% wanting an increase was $54.4 billion. Netting, or averaging together, all cuts as positive and all increases as negative made clear that Americans wanted to cut the defense budget by a grand average of $40.4 billion. The median of the whole sample was an almost identical cut, $40.0 billion. However measured, it seems fair to say that the people's collective idea of an appropriate peace dividend was about $40 billion.

The survey, to be realistic, had to go into the federal budget in greater detail than any previous opinion poll. Those wanting a cut in the military budget were asked for what their cut should be used, (1) reducing the deficit, (2) reducing taxes, (3) increasing spending or some combination. Each one allocated his/her cut among the three alternatives and the interviewer made sure that the allocation added up to the amount of the cut. Those wanting an increase in the military budget were similarly asked how they would make up this increase in the military budget by increases in (1) the deficit or (2) taxes, or by cuts in (3) spending or some combination. Respondents were next asked to allocate their own chosen amounts for spending cuts or increases among a selection of 16 budget items, ranked in order of support in Table 1. Each respondent who gave an amount in billions by which federal taxes should be increased was told in one question how much on average their own taxes would then be increased followed by, "Are you willing to have your own taxes rise that much?" Remarkably, 75% said, yes, willingly. Surprise for politicians? They tend to believe that a majority of constituents would never voluntarily be willing to increase taxes.

{Note that the rank order by percentage of people favoring increase, listed in the order of numbers: 1 to 16, are the same in column B as in column D. Those who want to increase the military budget and those who want to cut it, still have the same priorities on the rest of the budget. In other words, attitudes about increasing or cutting the military budget is uncorrelated to desires in cutting or increasing all other budget items}

Two years later, ATI conducted Survey #18, What the American People Want in the Federal Budget, to learn by what amounts the public wanted to reduce the deficit that had been ballooning out of control for years. The survey both utilized and went beyond the many amazing ways, pioneered in ATI#13, for using public-interest polling techniques to reliably and fairly capture the public's desires for sizing the items of the federal budget. ATI #18 took respondents through the complete congressional process, making the same decisions individual congressmen had to make, first with the overall budget resolution and then with each of 28 revenue and spending items that together covered all large (over 0.6$billion) budget items. Each item was presented to respondents with fair, pithy phrases on the contents, functions, size and history of the item.

As in ATI #13, once again, the people’s revenue and spending priorities were found to be quite different from those of leaders, essentially the same across all the major demographic sectors, and when the survey was released, were unreported by the mainstream news media. Major news media tended to ignore ATI findings that conflicted with their basic assumptions on public opinion. ATI #18 was no exception. Its many unique and enlightening features ultimately led Mike Kagay, polling editor of the New York Times, to graciously give ATI what seemed to be, can I say, a consolation prize by calling its survey #18, "The World's Greatest Survey."

The ATI #18 questionnaire was complex. The team of polling experts, Fred Steeper, Republican, and Stan Greenberg, Democrat, as well as other independents, were required to approve the description of each budget item as fair and balanced while not talking down to people. After making sure that respondents knew the difference between the debt and the deficit, and were ready to try to cut the deficit, the basic questions asked in the budget resolution phase were:

1. How much of the $360 billion deficit should be eliminated by INCREASING government revenues such as taxes, tariffs, and fees?

2. That leaves a deficit of (CATI #). How much should this (CATI #) billion dollar deficit be eliminated by CUTTING spending?

The program allowed answers in billions of dollars or by fractions (like cut a third) or in percentages (like cut 10%), and from those who could not manage numbers (fortunately only about 1 to 4 percent of respondents) qualitative answers were accepted. Allowances for exceptions and special cases also had to be made for those who eliminated the deficit altogether in (1) or together in both (1) and (2). Those who reduced the deficit by increasing revenue alone with no change in spending, and those who did it by decreasing spending alone with no change in revenue, were asked if they would wish to consider further decreasing the deficit by adjusting both. Those who did not eliminate the deficit by increasing revenue and/or by decreasing spending were provided with information on how much borrowing would be required and the interest charge that would arise thereby that would further increase the deficit. Interviewers explained such consequences and allowed respondents to change their previous answers and circle back through the same questions a number of times. Surpluses were allowed, but only 4 respondents out of the sample size of 1,000 adults stayed with a surplus to the end of the process.

The final mean budget deficit improvement for those who responded to (1) or (2) was $222.7 billion (62%). When the budget authorization phase ended, respondents were presented with the eight revenue and 20 budget items individually with the following results.

On the revenue side, majorities were for increasing pollution taxes (72%), tariffs (71%), taxes on alcohol and tobacco (64%), corporate income taxes (59%) and user fees (50%). Only small minorities favored cutting social security taxes (14%) and personal income taxes (18%). A remarkable two out of three wanted to keep both of them the same. Desired amounts of increases as a percent of the budgeted amount were pollution taxes (205%), tariffs (48%), alcohol and tobacco taxes (39%), user fees (22%), corporate income taxes (18%) and excise taxes (8%). Such responses exposed the disregard of the people's budget priorities, exhibited by that hallmark of President George H. W. Bush's four years – "no new taxes."

On the spending side, net support for increases as a percent of the budget item, in decreasing order, were: new energy sources (23%), education and job training (6%), funding for the arts, humanities and public broadcasting (5%), the environment (4%), and veterans' benefits (2%). The percent wanting item cuts and, expressed as a percent, the amount of cutting wanted relative to the item's budgeted size, respectively, were: military foreign aid (75%, 35%), CIA and other secret intelligence agencies (66%, 19%), nuclear warhead maintenance and production (63%, 17%), embassies and diplomatic service (49%, 17%) and the space program (52%, 13%).

Given many opportunities to cut spending items and increase revenue items, the people could not collectively bring themselves to cut the itemized budget by more than 23%. Still, the public did much better than Congress, which later in the year actually did not cut the budget at all, but rather increased it.

The beliefs of political leaders that the public will not make the hard choices needed for reducing the deficit and that the public wants no new taxes are just plain wrong, as shown both in ATI #13 and #18.

The collective responses in ATI #18 demonstrate what has also been observed in other surveys. The public acted responsibly, totally unlike, for example, most heads-of-state around the world. People did not, in any gross way, cut taxes that impact themselves or increase those that impact others. Large items were not changed by large percentages, but most items were changed in the direction of deficit reduction and usually a lot more than Congress achieved. The public showed restraint by opting for virtually no net increase in health care, unemployment compensation, and law enforcement, three items for which other surveys, not framed in a context of deficit reduction, find majorities favoring increases. People did not, in any gross way, cut taxes that impact themselves or cut spending on others. Seniors did not seek to cut education and job training, while younger people did support increases in spending on Social Security and Medicare benefits above the budgeted amount. There was little sign of inter-generational conflict in this survey.

The survey included built-in tests on fairness and balance in question wording and cooperativeness on the part of the Democrat and Republican pollsters and others who worked on question design. Three revenue items: (1) user fees, (2) taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and (3) certain other corporate/pollution taxes were presented to different samples with alternative wording to estimate sensitivity of response to cueing or pejorative/ameliorative language. That significant changes in descriptions of revenue sources, particularly (1) and (2), did not importantly influence preferences between cutting, increasing, and leaving the programs alone, suggests that the respondents were making genuine decisions about the merits of the programs and were not responding in a significant way to rhetorical appeals. For example, labeling taxes on alcohol and tobacco as "sin taxes" and adding the statement that the taxes on these items add up to "far less than the health care and other social costs of the use of these items" might have produced an enormously different response. It did not. Those wanting to increase these taxes were a 65% majority and remained almost the same size (64%) when expressed with more neutral wording.

At the end of a lengthy and challenging, but reportedly much enjoyed, interview, respondents were asked two final questions. First, "Would you like to have this kind of budget questionnaire made part of the Annual IRS Tax Return forms so that as you pay your taxes you can let the government know your revenue and spending priorities?" An amazing four out of five said yes. When the whole sample was asked if they would voluntarily fill out such a questionnaire and enclose it with their tax return, 50% said they certainly would, 28% said they probably would, and 11% said they possibly would.

When questioned with a wide range of policy choices in a user-friendly, scientific, random-sample survey designed to determine the federal budget, the people produce a budget that is fair, reasonable, responsible, balanced and timely and (in each of these measures) far better than the budget produced by the members of Congress and the administration. Unfortunately, both Congress and administrations are heavily focused on expanding their political power and wealth, which requires satisfying campaign finance backers and well-heeled lobbyists, while the governance desires of constituents are poorly known and seldom have priority over members' power and wealth.