Bi-partisan budget workshop unites Oakland County residents
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BERKLEY — Tuesday evening, U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, of Michigan’s 9th District, invited Oakland County residents to take part in a budget and debt assessment exercise sponsored by the Concord Coalition.
The event virtually filled Berkley High School’s Collaborative Center, where the event took place, with an audience that cut across political and age boundaries.
The purpose of the event, Peters said, was to provide the public an understanding of the thought process and approach that the U.S. Congress engages in when planning and negotiating the nation’s budget, and to provide people with “all of the facts” involved.
Peters said that he and his staff were mostly facilitating the event. The evening’s activity was led by The Concord Coalition, a non-partisan budget watchdog organization founded by Senators Warren Rudman and Paul Tsongas, and former Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson in 1992.
Sara L. Imhof, Midwest director and a policy analyst for the coalition, conducted the exercise, instructing dozens of small groups in the coalition’s “Principles and Priorities” exercise, which has been presented at universities, high schools and community meetings, like the one Peter’s hosted, nationwide.
Imhof presented the groups with a landscape shot of the U.S.’ budgetary facts and figures to ease into the difficult game of balancing the United States’ debt.
She presented charts showing the history of the U.S. government’s deficit spending since World War II — then about 109 percent debt to gross domestic product, which was paid down to around 30 percent of GDP by the 1960s — to recent spending from the 2008 recession where the nation’s debt rose from 40 to 60 percent of GDP by 2010.
Debt in industrial nations is an acceptable reality, Imhof said, so long as it is within a healthy 20 to 30 percent range of total of a nation’s GDP.
“Hard times have a long-term impact on our fiscal outlook,” she said.
The Concord Coalition provided groups with workbooks succinctly describing the annual items and policies that the Congressional Budget Office considers in budget planning along with brief arguments for and against each line item decision and the impact of the deficit that each decision would make.
“The question is, ‘Are we spending too much, or are we collecting too little revenue?” Imhof asked, imploring groups to answer through Principles and Priorities.
Regardless of the outcome, the percentage of entitlement funds dedicated to paying down interest on publicly held debt is rising rapidly. The CBO projects, continuing current spending policies, interest payments will account for around two percent of the 2011 fiscal budget, more than five percent by 2020 and almost 15 percent of the U.S. GDP by 2040.
Two percent is not high, Imhof said, “But interest rates can’t go much lower, and they will go up.”
Peters pointed out that there is misconception that many U.S. citizens have about the amount of control that Congress has over budgeting.
“We only vote on a very small part of the actual budget,” he said, “for appropriations like education and defense.”
Most of the budget consists of mandatory spending, Peters clarified — items and programs, like Social Security and Medicare, protected by mandated, un-negotiable levels of spending, which accounts for almost 60 percent of government spending.
According to Peters, the Congress only votes on about $1 trillion in discretionary spending, while the national debt for the fiscal 2011 year is expected to be around $1.4 trillion, with the biggest portion — $700 billion — going to national defense.
By CBO projections, mandatory spending is creeping toward 60 percent.
With facts and numbers provided, and worksheets disbursed, groups took to discussing and casting votes on how to handle the $1 trillion elephant in the room.
Groups debated four main topics, general spending, national defense, taxes and reform to mandatory spending, for an hour before each group submitted their budget proposals.
The average deficit reductions amounted to around $94 billion for general spending, $160 million being cut from defense, adding $585 million to the deficit by extending the 2001-2003 tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush and cutting $365 million from mandatory entitlements. In total the savings amounted to an average $27 million eliminated from the deficit.
These savings and cuts, many groups argued, would have been easier to agree upon with more facts, to which both Imhof and Peters agreed.
“If you just present it as raising the age to 70, I’ll reject it every time. But frame it as increasing the penalty for early retirement and I’ll consider that,” the man added.
Marieda and Lew Bishop of Berkley said that, though the meeting was “very useful,” they expected the congressman and the Concord Coalition to more thoroughly discuss facts and legislative principles considered by groups in the exercise.
To hurry delicate disussions, the couple said, would give the wrong impression of the issues.
“The concept is excellent,” Lew said, “But it’s not without its flaws.”
Peters called the exercise “a true town hall meeting,” unlike what, he said, usually happens at these sorts of meetings where “Someone will speak for awhile and then take questions,” and “much more civil than we usually are in Washington.”
The congressman said upon returning to the capitol he would recommend his colleagues hold similar forums.
Oakland University’s Student Congress was present at the event. Elisa Malile, OU’s Student Congress vice president said she was approached by the congressman’s staff prior to the event, allowing for her to reach out the campus organizations like OU’s student radio station, WXOU, The Oakland Post and the 21 OU students that attended the town hall.
“A lot of (students) were very excited to meet Congressman Peters and learn about what he had to say,” Malile said.
To increase students’ political involvement, Malile said, is one of the main goals of OUSC President Ben Eveslage and Vice President Malile’s.
To this purpose, Malile said that she and the OUSC are in the process of developing a student organization in collaboration with government relations and political science department.
Malile said that her expectations of the event were exceeded, that the event explained the complicated issues of a national budget well, and that she admired the commitment and capability of non-partisan cooperation.
Peters, too, expressed exceeded expectations.
“The meeting brought a really diverse group of people — diverse in age, diverse in background and certainly very diverse in political affiliation as well.”
He is excited to look at the data gathered, as well as suggested strategies to manage the country’s deficit, he said.
“We saw people of very diverse backgrounds coming together, voting and making decisions as to where we go as a country, and they don’t always agree, but were at least able to come together with some ideas as to how we grapple with this incredibly difficult situation of having a sustainable federal budget.”
Imhof, in concluding the event, said the town hall was “a prime example of civic discourse, of civil conversation.”
More information on the Concord Coalition can be found at its website, www.concordcoalition.org, as well as information about the “Principles and Priorities” exercise.
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