Voters Get Inside Look at Reality of Deficit Cutting

As the federal government wrestles with deficit reduction, many people around the country already have learned just how difficult that task is.

At the invitation of a Washington lobbying group ardently in favor of deep deficit cutting, voters in various cities are being asked to participate in four-hour sessions to try their hand at cutting the budget. Their ideas and suggestions are then passed on to the Clinton Administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Like their elected representatives, the citizen volunteers are discovering that deficit cutting is more difficult than it looks. But they also are demonstrating a willingness to make the sacrifices.

“We see people really make an effort to cut things that affect themselves,” said Carol Cox Wait, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “They understand that they can’t push it off on others. It is very heartening.”

The committee sends invitations to a random sample of registered voters in a city asking them to attend the session, called the “Exercise in Hard Choices.” Those who show up are divided into groups of eight to 10.

After being briefed on the different elements of the budget, the small group is left to craft a deficit-reduction plan, deciding on its own which taxes to raise and which spending to cut.

Participants soon discover that making substantive reductions in the deficit requires painful cuts in popular programs--which is exactly the point that the organizers are trying to prove.

“We want to make sure people understand what is involved in cutting the deficit,” explained Tim Miller, press secretary for Rep. Calvin Dooley (D-Visalia), who is scheduled to co-sponsor a meeting in July.

“Our office gets lots of letters from people saying, ‘Cut foreign aid,’ or ‘Cut congressional staffs,’ ” Miller said. “People don’t quite understand how little this money is. We need to make bigger cuts that are much more difficult.”

“We could put (the budget-cutting exercises) on full time because so many people want to do it,” said Martha Phillips, executive director of the Concord Coalition. The bipartisan group, formed late last year to organize grass-roots lobbying for deficit reduction, has co-sponsored several exercises with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and it has found the meetings so valuable that it has decided to train its staff members to conduct them on their own.

“It is a splendid educational device,” said Phillips. She said the group is sponsoring 12 exercises in the next six weeks across the country.

Wait’s committee recently issued a compilation of the results from exercises in the last year. Among the more notable finding are that participants:

* Believe that everyone, even the poor, should sacrifice.

* Support spending cuts in almost every area.

* Approve funding increases only for Head Start and the Women’s, Infants’ and Children’s feeding program.

* Reject income and corporate tax increases, except for a surtax on taxable incomes over $1 million.

* Prefer to raise revenue through energy taxes and sin taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.

“It shows that the people are much more ready for change than Washington thinks they are,” Wait said.