'There's a Lot on the Line': Constituents Tackle National Budget Deficit

The Collaborative Center at was transformed into a mini-Washington, DC, on Tuesday night as U.S. Rep. Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Township) asked participants in a public workshop to take a crack at solving the federal budget deficit.

Approximately 155 people of various political stripes, ages and cities of residence turned out for the event hosted by Peters, who was joined by Sara Imhof of The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Arlington, VA.

Peters got things started by framing the gravity of the situation.

During the 2011 fiscal year, he said, the United States' federal budget deficit is expected to hit $1.4 trillion dollars.

Read another way: The federal deficit is expected to reach $1,400,000,000,000 this year.

Put in context, the United States is expected to spend $700 billion on defense this year, meaning that even if the entire defense budget were to be cut, there would still be a deficit, Peters said.

He challenged participants, who were seated in teams and received workbooks, to "talk about your priorities and put some numbers to it." (See the attached PDFs to try the exercise yourself.)

Breaking down the debt

Peters then turned the presentation over to Imhof, Midwest regional director and health policy analyst of The Concord Coalition, who gave a 15-minute presentation (see attached PDF) on the national debt that included the following nuggets:

• Mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consumes 41 percent of the federal budget.
• Sixty percent of the federal budget is mandatory spending, and 40 percent is discretionary spending on which legislators vote. In 2010, half of discretionary spending was spent on defense, which which is low compared to historical figures.
• During the next 30 years, the number of people in retirement programs is expected to double, due to longer life spans and a declining birth rate.
• In the past, there were enough workers to support retirees via a payroll tax, but that is changing as the number of retirees swells. Today, there are 3.1 workers to support each Social Security recipient; in 2029, there are expected to be 2.2 workers to support each recipient. "It's a historical and structural imbalance," Imhof told the audience. "Our fiscal policy today is not sustainable."
• The federal budget deficit is expected to hit $6.7 trillion within a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That is a baseline estimate that assumes a number of tax cuts will expire in 2011 and 2012, that discretionary spending will only increase at the rate of inflation and that payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients will be cut. Discounting those variables, the deficit is projected to be even higher.

"We have big deficits in our future, even in the rosiest of pictures," Imhof said.

She then challenged participants to discuss the budget options in their workbooks – focusing on health care, international aid, paying down the debt, homeland security/defense, and taxes – and vote on policies amongst their teams to solve the deficit.

'We are concerned'

As she headed to her table to get started, Erma Wood of West Bloomfield said she felt a kinship with the other participants.

"We are concerned about the budget," she said. "We are concerned about how the government is being run. And we are concerned about this gigantic deficit."

Bill Walker, a 30-year resident of Berkley, agreed, calling the deficit "a mess."

But Walker said he thought the workshop was too little, too late, and he faulted the organizers for not including all of the federal government's potential revenue options in the hourlong exercise. As examples, he offered natural gas drilling and pursuing fraud in Medicare and government contracts.

"The federal budget is such a massive topic that you're not going to fit every option in this exercise," said Peters spokesman Clark Pettig, explaining that items currently under consideration by Congress or that are most frequently discussed were included.

'There's a lot on the line'

Taking a break from chatting with participants, Peters said he was pleased with how the workshop was going and that he had received a lot of valuable feedback to take with him to the Capitol.

"Just about every item here has a direct impact" on people's lives, Peters said, citing as examples Pell Grants for college students and home mortgage deductions.

"Cutting federal dollars shifts the problem to local units of government," he said.

That statement resonated with Oakland County Treasurer Andy Meisner, who attended Tuesday's meeting.

Meisner said the borrowing cost on debt is money that could be spent in other areas that hit closer to home, such as:

• Neighborhood Stabilization Program Grants that can be used to tackle issues associated with foreclosure.
• Community Development Block Grants that are designed to ensure the availability of affordable housing and services; to create jobs by stimulating the creation and expansion of businesses; and assist local governments.
• Medicare.
• Medicaid.

"It is something that really impacts all of our futures," Meisner said. "There's a lot on the line."

Besides affecting funds available for key programs, the deficit is becoming a sovereignty issue because China and Saudi Arabia own a substantial portion of U.S. debt, Meisner said.

Other elected officials in attendance Tuesday included Berkley Mayor Marilyn Stephan; Berkley City Council members Steve Baker, Eileen Steadman and Phil O'Dwyer; and Clawson Mayor Penny Luebs.

When the teams came back together to discuss their experiences at the end of the exercise, the most-often mentioned topic was taxes – whether to extend cuts for the wealthiest Americans and whether tax rates should be raised on the middle class.

Despite the variety of opinions on how to tackle the deficit, the discussion was productive and the teams were able to find substantial savings.

"You were a lot more civil and a lot more polite than what usually happens in Washington," Peters said.