Some of you asked for me to follow up when something came out of that town hall meeting I diaried about:Debt & Deficit National Town Hall. And so here is what I received:
Hello Jo,
Yesterday afternoon, AmericaSpeaks President Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer presented preliminary results from the National Town Meeting to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. You can read (and share comments on) the written testimony that Carolyn submitted to the Commission here.
In the coming weeks, we'll be doing more analysis of the ideas and priorities that we heard from you on Saturday. As soon as we can, we'll share with you more in-depth voting results, data from our 39 Community Conversation sites, and all of the raw data that was collected through the computer system. We'll also be able to post a video of the full program as well as a highlights video.
As this data becomes available, we'll also provide more complete briefings to other members of Congress, as well as the National Commission.
The link in the email sent me to here.
As i told you in the previous diary, using the math exercise they gave us our table did, indeed, come up with the 1.2 trillion they targeted even though in a later vote we singular folks only came up with a little over 700 billion.
But NOW, in their testimony to the commission they emphasize the table tabulations:
Achieving the Target: Across the board, participants took the exercise very seriously. Walking around the room in Philadelphia, I was deeply impressed by the depth with which participants grappled with the trade offs. All told, 47% of the 350 tables across our 19 primary sites reached the target of $1.2 trillion. An additional 11% reached $1.1 trillion in deficit reductions, 7% reached $1 trillion, 7% reached $900 billion, 5% reach $800 billion, 8% reached $700 billion, 6% reached $600 billion, and 10% reached less than $600 billion.
Here are the items they are giving the commission as agreements:
In general, participants expressed reluctance to reduce spending on those programs that support our most vulnerable populations, but demonstrated a willingness to reduce spending in order to reach the deficit reduction target. A majority of participants supported at least a 5% reduction in federal health care spending and in "all other non-defense spending" with some supporting higher levels of reductions. Participants expressed strong support for reducing spending on national defense as a means to reach their deficit reduction target with a majority supporting a 15% cut and additional participants supporting a 10% cut.
Additional items:
Raising the social security eligibility for full benefits to age 69.
Option to raise the payroll tax cap on earnings to 90%. Additional feedback through the computers suggested that some participants supported eliminating the cap all together
Participants expressed support for raising revenues through increasing tax rates to those in the top tax brackets and to those earning more than $1 million a year.
Significant support was also offered for raising the top corporate income tax rate by five percentage points and on raising capital gains tax rates.
A majority of participants expressed support for the establishment of both a securities-transaction tax and a carbon tax. Little support was provided for the establishment of a Value Added Tax.
Interestingly, they did not report out whether participants wanted the top brackets to have their rate increased by 10 or 20%. We did not get over 50% for this in the individual tallies. But we had 48% wanting the tax to be increased to 20% and 18% reporting in favor of 10%. Using their previous logic, they would normally go for the 10% increase. Nor did they mention anything about the corporate depreciation allowances being moved back to previous rates. Depreciation schedules were allowed to be shorten in order to encourage corporate spending on goods. This was one of the places that the single individuals reported in favor of by 51%.
And, further the testimony emphasizes how serious the participants were:
Above and beyond anything else, the messages that participants said they wanted to send to leaders at the end of the day focused on the process rather than the content of the discussion. Among the most common sentiments from table groups were:
* "Can you be elected officials first and politicians second? Our table balanced the budget in less than an hour."
* "Abandon the failed politics of partisanship." "You can’t demonize each other and expect us to trust you."
* "Please find the political will to use this input as if it were coming from a powerful lobbying group – because we are!"
* "Listen to the people and not special interests."
* "We need to deal with these issues now!"
89% of participants in the 19 sites said they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the tone and quality of political discussion in our country today. In contrast, 91 percent of participants said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the tone and quality of discussions at the National Town Meeting.
There are a few caveats here I would like to throw out.
- We did, indeed, enjoy the exercise. I think by and large, people do like to feel they have input into the processes that rule us. And I would like to see something like this done by dems or progressive or just us but with it opened up so that we could figure out our own possibilities rather than have a canned agenda and a fast pace moving us towards some predefined goal by others.
- We were not allowed to vote on the presentation of any material to this commission. They took the results from this exercise and created a report from it, and they used the whole table results rather than the individual results to make sure they had the results to report. (Some paranoia on my part, I feel it was a very scripted and knowledgeable campaign to get the results they wanted. But even with that I suspect they were surprised that we, or a least some of us, were willing to throw the defense budget into the shredder in a big way!)
- Because it was scripted, because they did have the rushed agenda, because they did have table monitors that pushed us to conclusions on cutting medicare and social security, pardon me if I am a bit skeptical about this claim:
AmericaSpeaks is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that I founded in 1995 with the mission of providing the American public with a greater voice in the policy making process. Our democracy is deeply broken and has been for some time. I founded AmericaSpeaks to develop new methods and processes for convening large, diverse groups of citizens to find common ground and inform the policy making process.
And I look at this statement with extreme skepticism.:
rack Record: Over the past 15 years, AmericaSpeaks has engaged more than 150,000 people in deliberative processes to inform and shape decisions on a wide range of issues. In 1998-99, AmericaSpeaks engaged 45,000 Americans in a national discussion on Social Security. In 2002, we engaged 5,000 New Yorkers in shaping the redevelopment plans for the World Trade Center after 9/11. Between 1999 and 2005, we engaged more than 10,000 residents of Washington, DC, in shaping their city’s budget priorities. In 2005-6, we engaged several thousand residents of New Orleans, many of whom had not yet returned home, in developing their city’s recovery plan after Hurricane Katrina.
(Yes, Katrina recovery and the World Trade Center Building has gone along so well and swimmingly. I guess they will hold seminars for the dolphins in the gulf next.)
But I am probably being somewhat unfair. You all more knowledgeable people can look at these two lists and find something I have missed:
Board of Advisors:
National Advisory Board
Tom Allen
Former U.S. Congressman (D-ME)
Bill Bradley
Former U.S. Senator (D-NJ)
Managing Director, Allen & Company
Mickey Edwards
Former U.S. Congressman (R-OK)
Aspen Institute
Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership
John Bridgeland
Former Assistant to the President of the U.S.
Former Director, USA Freedom Corps
President & CEO, Civic Enterprises, LLC
Steve Burkholder
Former Mayor, City of Lakewood, CO
Henry Cisneros
Former Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Former Mayor, San Antonio
CityView
Archon Fung
Associate Professor of Public Policy, JFK School of Government at Harvard University
Bill Galston
Senior Fellow, Governance Program at The Brookings Institution
David Gergen
Former Advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton
Public Service Professor, JFK School of Government at Harvard University
Jane Mansbridge
Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, JFK School of Government at Harvard University
Constance Barry Newman
Special Counsel on African Affairs, Carmen Group
Former Assistant Secretary, Bureau for African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State
Norman Rice
Former Mayor, Seattle
Distinguished Visiting Practitioner-in-Residence, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington
Alice Rivlin
Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Barbara Roberts
Former Governor, Oregon
Associate Director of Leadership Development Program, Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University
Lou Tomson
Former President, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
Mary Wilson
President, League of Women Voters
Daniel Yankelovich
Founder, Public Agenda
Viewpoint Learning
And the Board of Directors:
Board Chair
Damon Hemmerdinger
Co-founder and Principal
ATCO Advisory Services
New York, NY
Board Treasurer
Benjamin J. Lieblich
Chief Financial Officer
ProPractica, Inc.
Shaker Heights, OH
Board Members
Juanita Boyd Hardy
IBM Global Services (Retired)
Washington, DC
Kevin A. Ewing
Partner
Bracewell & Giuliani
Washington, DC
Reese W. Fayde
Reese Fayde & Associates
New York, NY
Peter Levine
Director
Center for Information and Research
on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)
Washington, DC
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer
Founder and President
AmericaSpeaks
Washington, DC
Howard M. Rossman, Ph. D.
Chairman
Mesirow Advanced Strategies, Inc.
Chicago, IL
Mayor Anthony Williams
CEO
Primum Public Realty Trust
Arlington, VA
Carol Wishcamper
Consultant
Consulting Partners
Freeport, ME
Lee H. Hamilton
President and Director
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Washington, DC
Like I say, I would like to see us, progressives do something similar albeit with a twist. I would like to see us engaged in solving our nation's critical problems: Unemployment, regulatory issues, climate change, energy policy, war, and ecological disasters like the gulf. I see it happening in four parts: 1) Educating ourselves on the problem, 2) Brainstorming, 3) Researching ideas from the brainstorming and reporting back which again we will inform ourselves of that research and 4) Determine which, if any, ideas we could promote and see if we could get our congresscitters to pledge to that policy. I can't see everybody getting excited about every problem, but I can see people signing on and committing to a particular problem clear through pledging the critters.