UMD Study: Big Differences on Defense, Job Training, Taxes
Newswise — COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The public is on a different page with regard to the federal budget than either the House of Representatives or the Obama Administration, bringing a different set of priorities for spending and a greater willingness to both cut spending and increase taxes, concludes a new analysis by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation (PPC).
This new analysis compares the House and administration budget proposals with those produced by a representative sample of U.S. adults. These public budgets were part of an innovative study released last month.
While there were some partisan differences in the magnitude of spending changes, two thirds of the time, the average Republican, Democrat and Independent in the survey agreed on the items that should be cut or increased.
• Defense: Public favors deep cuts while the administration and the House propose modest increases. • Domestic: Public favors substantially more spending on job training, education and pollution control than either the House or the administration. • Level of Cuts: On average the public made a net reduction in spending of $146 billion – far more than either the administration or the House. • Taxes: The public also showed readiness to increase taxes by an average of $292 billion – again, far more than either the administration or the House.
“Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget,” said University of Maryland researcher Steven Kull director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), which conducted the study. “Our respondents would more than double funding for job training and cut deeply on defense.”
While the time frames of the three budgets are not the same, the comparison still reflects substantial differences in priorities and approaches used by the respondents, the House and the Administration, Kull added. The public’s response was relative to the projected budget for 2015, while the House budget and President Obama’s budget were relative to the current fiscal year.
“The budget allocations represent a clear expression of values and priorities, even if the time frames differ,” Kull said.
PPC is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Unlike in conventional polls, PPC consults with the public by presenting respondents information on policy issues, followed by a range of options to address them. In this case respondents were presented the discretionary budget, with descriptions of each program, and allowed to make changes.
FINDINGS - SPENDING
DEFENSE: On average, the public cut defense spending by 18 percent reducing it $109 billion. In contrast, the president’s proposal increases defense spending by 4 percent and the House calls for increasing it 2 percent.
JOB TRAINING: The most dramatic differences were for job training and higher education. The public increased job training a whopping 130 percent, while the House cut it by a stark 47 percent. The administration nicked it 3 percent. For higher education, the House cut 26 percent, the administration increased it 9 percent. The public would nearly double current spending with an increase of 92 percent.
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT: These were major areas of difference as well. The House bill cut the Department of Energy’s work on renewable fuels and efficiency, by 36 percent. This stands in stark contrast to the administration budget proposal, which increases it 44 percent. The public went even further with a 110 percent increase. While the House cuts the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 39 percent and the administration cuts it by 13 percent, the public would increase it by 17 percent.
NASA, SCIENCE RESEARCH: On average, the public cut the space program 17 percent, while neither the administration nor the House made significant changes. The administration proposes modest increases for scientific research, as did the public (5 percent), while the House cuts it by 12 percent.
FOREIGN AID: The public cut spending for foreign aid that is meant to serve strategic purposes. Aid to countries “of strategic concern,” known as the Economic Support Fund, was cut 23 percent, and military aid 15 percent. The administration cut the Economic Support Fund 9 percent while the House cut it 6 percent, but neither made significant cuts to military aid.
For more altruistic forms of aid, on balance, the public made little change overall, but shifted funds around – increasing humanitarian aid by 18 percent, cutting development assistance 14 percent and leaving spending on global health essentially unchanged. In the president’s 2012 proposal, humanitarian assistance funding is cut 8 percent, while funding for global health gets an increase (11 percent), as does development assistance (12 percent). In the House bill, humanitarian assistance is cut 17 percent, global health by 6 percent and development assistance by 18 percent.
TRANSPORTATION: The administration has called for large scale increases to federal spending in highways (53 percent), air travel and roads (36 percent) and mass transit (109 percent). The House made a deep cut (27 percent) to mass transit. The public, meanwhile, makes modest cuts to highways (9 percent) and air travel and roads (7 percent), but leaves mass transit essentially unchanged.
For this analysis, the changes the public made in the budget exercise were compared to the OMB projected budget for 2015, while those the administration made were in its 2012 budget proposal relative to the previous year. Changes by the House were based on the recently-passed changes to spending for 2011. (2011 spending is lower than 2015 projections but the distributions are very similar, thus comparisons of percentage changes are meaningful.)
FINDINGS – TAXES
PUBLIC: Besides making changes to spending, respondents were presented a series of options for increasing revenue. On average, respondents increased revenues by $292 billion. The largest portion was from income taxes: majorities increased taxes on incomes over $100,000 by 5 percent or more, and increased them by 10 percent or more for incomes over $500,000. Majorities also increased corporate and other excise taxes.
For the estate tax, a majority (77 percent) favored reverting at least to the 2009 levels, taxing estates over $3.5 million at a 45 percent rate. Only 15 percent of respondents supported the recently passed estate tax levels: taxing estates over $5 million at a 35 percent rate.
ADMINISTRATION, HOUSE: The Obama administration holds to its position that the Bush-era tax cuts for incomes above $250,000 should be allowed to expire, and now proposes this for after 2012. By 2015 this would generate $97.2 billion in revenues. The House leadership has so far not made any proposal to increase tax revenues and has favored making the Bush tax cuts permanent.
FULL-TEXT ANALYSIS
The original study, which produced the public results, was fielded December 18-29 with a sample of 793 respondents (margin of error plus or minus 3.5 percent). It was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Details online: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb11/Budget_Feb11_rpt.pdf
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