Skip to Content
Eric Black Ink

Balance the budget but don't raise taxes or cut benefits

By Eric Black | 03/16/11

David Brooks, of the NY Times, every liberal's favorite conservative national pundit, has said, seemingly every time I've seen him on the tube recently, that the basic problem with budget politics is that Americans want more government than they are willing to pay for.

It's an oversimplification, but a perspicacious one. I fear that relatively few among us support higher taxes on ourselves or cuts in the government programs from which we personally benefit. I dream of the rally at which a bunch of serious deficit hawks carry signs that say: "Raise my taxes and cut my benefits or you don't get my vote."

Anyway, Brooks' formulation seems well matched to the latest Pew Poll findings on deficit/debt/budget matters. Specifically:

24 percent of Americans now say that deficit is the nation's top economic problem. That ranks it third on the list behind the high unemployment rate (34 percent) and the fear of inflation (28).

But what to do about the deficit?

  • A whopping 67 percent of Americans say don't raise taxes. (I note that the Pew question did not offer the option of raising taxes only on the wealthiest, or some variation on that idea.)
  • And 65 percent say don't make changes in Social Security or Medicare.
  • As to the other biggest spending category, military spending, 49 percent say it could be lower, 47 percent say no.

In the long run, there is no path to a sustainable fiscal course that would not require some combination of higher taxes, cost-saving changes in the big entitlement programs and military spending. But as the desire to make progress on deficit/debt grows, we nonetheless have a supermajority of Americans who oppose tax hikes or entitlement changes and a small plurality that is willing to cut military spending.

Of the course, as most polls show, a majority of Americans is willing to entertain cuts in domestic discretionary spending, which is precisely where Repubs have been focusing their scalpels in the day to day argument over the budget for the current year. But even the biggest numbers proposed by Tea Party-inspired Repubs for cuts in domestic discretionary would constitute only a symbolic gesture on the road to fiscal sustainability.

Pew finds that a moment of brief and not very substantial confidence that Republicans in Congress had a credible plan for the budget, measured the week of last fall's election, has passed. But that confidence has not been transferred to the Dems, only to the belief that neither party has the public's confidence in the handling of budget matters. That one goes like this:

"Who has the better approach to the budget deficit: Barack Obama, or the Republicans in Congress, or is there not much difference?"

Nov 4-7, 2010:  Obama 24, Republicans 35, Not much difference 33
Mar 8-14, 2011: Obama 20, Republicans 21, Not much difference 52

And the big reason for the change noted just above is that many self-identified Tea Party enthusiasts have already lost confidence in the Repubs. From the Pew writeup of the poll:

"The shift in opinion has been particularly dramatic among Republicans, Republican-leaning independents and Tea Party supporters. Shortly after the November election, 76% of Tea Party supporters said Republicans in Congress had a better approach to the budget deficit while just 16% said there was not much difference between their approach and Obama’s. Today, 52% of Tea Party supporters say the GOP has a better approach and 39% say there is not much difference in how the two sides approach the deficit."

Related Tags:

Comments (8)

Submitted by Mark Viste on March 17, 2011 - 12:07pm.

Surely the possibility that the budget could improve with increased economic productivity--such as would arise from reducing unemployment--deserves at least a footnote in this discussion. The current budget deficits are not primarily a result of a ramp-up in spending, but of a loss of revenue when the economy went over the cliff.

Submitted by Ray Schoch on March 17, 2011 - 1:53pm.

Mark’s point (#1) is well-taken, but I nonetheless think Eric is writing about an increasingly common and/or popular attitude. I’ve come to refer to it as “the free lunch syndrome,” having learned long ago, at the knee of several politically liberal but fiscally conservative Republicans (you can tell it was many years ago because if that combination currently exists, it has gone into hiding) that any and every government program, no matter how efficiently administered, costs money. This might be the single salient point at which my interests and beliefs are at least compatible with those of Tea Party enthusiasts.

Republicans, no matter how long they’re in power in Washington and St. Paul, will never be able to make serious progress toward eliminating deficits by wielding their usual hatchet (“scalpel” gives them too much credit for nuance, I think) exclusively on the social programs they don’t like. That the “let them eat cake” attitude exemplified by that fiscal posture doesn’t bode well for the future of the state or the country appears to bother them not at all, but perhaps they don’t see any parallels between 18th century France and 21st century America.

Democrats have so far demonstrated that they lack the political will to even suggest something approaching fiscal discipline – paying for what you buy, rather than putting it on the taxpayer-funded credit card. If they hope to regain power in either state or national legislatures, my own bias is that they’ll have to become advocates for fiscal discipline. I’d want them to have different priorities than Republicans, for whom business has become a less-than-admirable secular religion, but if they can’t muster some fiscal backbone, they’ll remain the minority party.

In any case, I completely agree – without losing sight of efficiency and necessity as operative principles for government programs and services – that on the federal level, no progress will be made on the deficit unless/until entitlements and the military are brought under control. We’re wasting billions of dollars on a failed effort in Afghanistan, have already wasted billions more in Iraq, and if we start flying air strikes in Libya, we’ll soon feel the need to have boots on the ground there, as well. The “National Guard” will soon be strangers in their own country, having spent so much time in foreign territory on missions that I feel certain were never envisioned by the folks who created the National Guard in the first place.

Meanwhile, it’s the cost of health care that will bankrupt us completely if the military doesn’t. Those who argue that we have the finest health care system in the world haven’t been paying attention for about a generation, and even if they’re still using that tired and inaccurate phrase, they’re forgetting to add the important caveat: “If you can afford it.” The skyrocketing cost of health care is an albatross around the necks of individuals and businesses that can easily cripple both financially. If Michele Bachmann had to pay for her own health care, I wager she’d suddenly decide that a single-payer system might not be the totally abhorrent socialist plot she pretends to think it is.

Social Security also needs reform, but of the three, it’s the budget-buster that seems most easily dealt with, and in relative terms, with the least pain. Raise the retirement age, raise the income limit, and perhaps – this is a pet idea for which I can claim no credit – write legislation that makes the Social Security Trust Fund untouchable by Congress for other spending purposes.

Submitted by Paul Brandon on March 17, 2011 - 3:57pm.

AS usual, Ray, you've said it all.

Submitted by dan buechler on March 17, 2011 - 4:39pm.

All that the Pew survey shows me is that at least 52% of the American public are know nothings.

Submitted by chuck holtman on March 17, 2011 - 5:08pm.

Ray's (#2) commentary is always thoughtful, but I do differ strongly on raising the retirement age. I am, at this point, persuaded by the writings of others that we will have a structural employment problem for years to come, and that the last thing we want to do is to enact policies that keep more folks in the work force. In this rare case, good policy coincides with what we ought to aspire to as a society - a system where folks do not have to work until they die, but actually have the option to retire and have some quality time in their later years. The evidence is pretty clear that there is no Social Security "crisis" and that the system will function just fine for a very long time with a moderate increase in the income cap.

Submitted by will lynott on March 17, 2011 - 7:35pm.

Frankly, I don't understand why a social security income cap exists in the first place. Can someone explain that to me?

I also don't understand why means testing is not part of the equation. Affluent people who retire in the lap of luxury do not need social security. Why do they get it?

Submitted by Annie Grandy on March 17, 2011 - 10:15pm.

Yes, let's talk *entitlements* - payouts to big agriculture, bit oil and big corporations for nothing. This is the area that needs top stops and controls. Help support the little guy where necessary but when they start making profit at a certain level - cut them off - and limit deductions so they can't make it look like they're not making that profit. Make all businesses produce only one set of books, not as so many do today, one for the shareholders and one for the IRS. Those are entitlements that are truly unnecessary. They'll pass the tax cost along to the consumer? They should - every widget should have all costs built into the price then the consumer can decide if it is worth the price or not. How many failing widgits are taxpayers currently subsidizing?

Submitted by Ken Tschumper on March 18, 2011 - 12:15am.

Eric, I think you wrote this column with partial blinders. This is from a column, March 13, by Ezra Klien of Newsweek."A Bloomberg poll released last week showed that letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire was the single most popular way to reduce the budget deficit. And an NBC–Wall Street Journal poll released a week before that found that financing deficit reduction with a surtax on millionaires was similarly popular. Republicans may not want to talk about raising taxes on the wealthy, but other people do." I think that much of the media discussion around the deficit has been highly slanted toward cuts instead of tax increases probably because many "opinion leaders" would have to pay higher taxes. Both Paul Krugman and Robert Riech have written repeatedly of the need to raise taxes and not cut government spending while the eonomy is still in such a fragil recovery.You are correct in that Obama and the Dems have been wimps.