A few days ago, the folks at Zogby International released the results of a survey conducted in February 2010. In this survey, Zogby asked Americans what percentage of the Federal budget they believed specific categories represented. For example, they asked questions like what percentage of the Federal budget was comprised of defense spending, or Medicare. Then they contrasted the perception of the surveyed Americans against the actual 2008 Federal budget.To present their findings, the Zogby folks used a simple table, which I believe made it difficult to quickly contrast the actual spend against the estimate of the average American. So I tried to create a chart that shed more light on the results. In the chart above (click to see full size), I've portrayed the 2008 Federal budget in a pie chart, then used smaller bar charts to show the range of the estimates from the surveyed population. (The Zogby survey asked respondents to characterize their estimates into ranges from less than 5% to greater than 20%, grouped in 5% segments.)
Yes, the chart's a bit busy, but I hope that at a glance (or two) you can see, for instance, that defense spending is 21% of the country's budget, and that 41% of those surveyed thought that defense spending was more than 20% of the budget. From this I extrapolate that most Americans have a general conception of how much we spend on defense.
What's interesting here is not where we're right, but where we're wrong. Or as Zogby so dryly put it, "Respondents were furthest off in their estimates for interest on the debt and non-defense discretionary spending."
For almost a year now, the media has been covering right-wing reactionary groups that call themselves teabaggers, whose rambling and sometimes treasonous epithets can be distilled into apparent demands to stop Federal spending because we can't support the debt, to stop international aid because the recipients aren't American, and to halt all non-defense discretionary spending. (If only they could make their arguments so succinctly, or cogently.)
And in an effort to help keep this country together, the Obama administration has tried to find common ground with these folks by proposing a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending.
But as the chart shows, average Americans are quite off in their estimates of just how much the US spends in these three areas. Take debt service, please. More than a quarter of Americans appear to think we spend more than 20% of our budget on interest paid on our debt. And the vast majority of Americans seem to think we spend far in excess of the 8% of our budget that we actually use to service the debt.
And the proposed freeze on non-defense discretionary spending will hold the line on 18% of our Federal budget, but will apparently have an even greater impact on the 37% of Americans who think we put even more money than that in this particular budget bucket.
As for international aid, conservative commentators have actually said recently that we don't need to donate to Haiti for their disaster relief because, in part, we already pay them out of our taxes, yet aid going outside the US accounts for less than 1% of the Federal budget. While 28% of those polled were in the ballpark on this item, 60% of the population is wildly off, which seems to feed right into the teabagger fantasies.
So it seems the small-but-loud groups that are clamoring for national and international disengagement based on fiscal inability are, in fact, quite misinformed as to just how our budget is actually spent. Imagine that. (Well, you don't have to actually imagine it, as Zogby's done the research, and I've tried to graph it.)
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2 comments:
I agree that fiscal discipline should not be based on misconceptions about how much money is actually going where. But, fiscal discipline in the form of a balanced budget and a reduced national debt is still critical for the future health of the nation.
It is noteworthy to add that the current Health Care Reform bill seems to address Medicare/Medicaid expenses. With the exception of that 20% of the budget, the teabaggers and the Obama Administration are reaching the same conclusion. Both are looking to halt non-defense discretionary spending, regardless of their perception of the makeup of the federal budget.
Of course, both sides being in agreement does not mean both sides are right. The Obama Administration risks not being any better than the Republicans who demand debt reduction but scream murder when risking Medicare benefits. This is the same Administration resolute on maintaining the legacy Bush tax cuts for the middle class while leaving open the inevitability of increased defense spending and social security costs. On both sides, politicians have a nasty habit of promising too much.
Yes, but I'm inclined to side with the administration that actually discusses fiscal policy and entitlement reform, versus the one that dropped palettes of US currency into the Middle East without any oversight whatsoever.
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