Not One Debate Question Touched on the Deficit

Not One Debate Question Last Night Touched on the Deficit
By: David Dayen Wednesday October 17, 2012 11:34 am

I should have touched on this quite a bit earlier in my discussion about the second debate today, because it’s really important. What this debate showed, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that actual Americans, those who live outside the Beltway and don’t frequent think tank panel discussions or green rooms for cable news, don’t give a (*)(*)(*)(*) about the deficit. At all.

Here’s the debate transcript. There were 18 references to the deficit. They all came unprompted from the candidates, when they were asked about subjects like job prospects for college graduates, tax deductions, differentiations from George W. Bush, the Obama record, and wage competitiveness with China. 11 of the references came from Obama, and 7 from Romney. And none from any questioner.

The deficit was arguably the primary point of discussion in the Jim Lehrer debate, and Martha Raddatz featured it prominently as well. Voters don’t seem to care. They’re far more interested in things directly affecting their lives, like jobs, women’s rights, immigration, gun violence, gas prices, all topics that didn’t come up previously. Heck, even foreign policy, or at least the foreign policy situation of the moment in Libya, rated more pressing a concern than actuarial projections of the federal budget 20 or 30 years down the road.

I’m not always partial to the idea of the wisdom of crowds, but in this case, the political class would do well to follow the public. Polling consistently shows that voters don’t care about the deficit, and last night’s breadth of topics showed the same.

The group that consistently cares more about the deficit are, simply put, rich people. They don’t want their hard-earned massive tax cuts to get clawed back because the deficit gets so high that they can no longer use the “job creator” charade to shield themselves. So they obsess about the deficit, as a means to cut anything but their tax cuts. That’s the game. And the rich spend tens of millions to make that a reality, shaping opinions in Washington. The Democrats have sought to become the party of austerity in many ways to curry favor to a political class that demands so-called “fiscal responsibility.” But in reality, without our large deficit, we would not even have the recovery we have, a recovery that has outpaced the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, where they are mired in far more damaging austerity.

The more politicians realize that the public does not share the concern of the Beltway establishment on the deficit, the better off they – and the rest of us – will be.

Source: http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/10/17/not-one-debate-question-last-night-touched-on-the-deficit/



An interesting piece, to say the least. It does seem to be the case, largely, that the deficit only really matters to those really into politics. The average voters care more about things that actually affect them, and the deficit? Well, it doesn't. In fact, right now, we're in a prime position to deficit spend given the obscenely low interest rates on federal debt, and more fiscal stimulus is liable to help the economy greatly, given how the problem is a demand-based slump.

 

They do care about the deficit. And the ones that don't, just don't realize that they care about it. Those who don't care about it don't realize how it affects our everyday lives.

 

Of course the media and liberal moderators arent going to be talking about the (D)ebt or (D)eficit.......its a (D)emocrat in the Whitehouse......
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Okay, I'll bite. How does it affect our everyday lives?

No... Again, the point was that the people asking questions, the independents in the debate, never mentioned the deficit. The media talks plenty about both, but everyday people? Not so much.

 

Translation: I'm a partisan hack who didn't bother reading the OP, I'm just here to spread my BS propaganda.

You're forgetting the (R)epublican cont(R)ibution to the deficit, but of cou(R)se, the deficit isn't what actually matters to you. It's just a tool to (*)(*)(*)(*) on your enemies with.

 

Like it or not trat the Democrats are responsible for 87.5% of the Deficit because they have controlled the congress for seventy of the last eighty years.

And how does the deficit affect our lives? By 2016 the single largest item on the federal budget will be debt servicing. Nearly a trillion dollars to be spent for the primary pupose of keeping our creditors at bay and you are silly enough to think that has no impact?

And who picked the questions? Why your left leaning moderator of course. And you're asking why the Deficit didn't come up? The articles disengenuousness is only matched by it's chutzpah and disassociation from reality.

 

Which still makes your side responsible for 12.5% of it, yet we never hear about that. It's like the GOP sprang out of magic faerie dust four years ago and never existed before that.

Again, am I the only person that reads OP's before commenting in threads? THE ARTICLE SAID that the only times the deficit was brought up was by the CANDIDATES and the MODERATORS. In the debate that had REAL VOTERS asking questions, NOT ONE QUESTION was about the deficit.

All of that stuff you would know if you would read the (*)(*)(*)(*)ing article.

 

Again the moderator selected the questions to be asked. Her thoughts or questions or comments about the deficit, were in direct response to what the condidates themselves had already said. The assumption that because the Moderator selected no questions about the deficit from the audience that no one in the audience had any qestions about the deficit is at best disengenuous and at worst completely illogical

 

If the deficit was the number one issue on a majority of Americans' minds, she would not have been able to AVOID numerous deficit questions. At least one would have made it through.

None did, and I'll tell you why. Because the article writer spoke the truth. The deficit is an issue to just about everyone. But it's not a major issue to most.

Hell, Republicans only care about the deficit now because a Democrat is in office.

 

Citation needed. What's this projection based on? The idea that our debt will balloon by an order of magnitude, that we'll have ridiculous deflation, that our rates will go up (again, by an order of magnitude), or all three?

So... conspiracy theories? Gotcha.

 

Not surprising really, considering that both camps' campaigns seem to be focusing on little else than how awful the other side is.

 

I think the article is spot on. I am into the debt but then I am into politics. Other people I know that aren't are more worried about jobs and things like abortion but depending on who they listen too, they usually don't say anything very thoughtful other than sound bites.

What people should realize is that the debt and mainly the interest on the debt will affect them directly as it will drain their tax dollars, some of which will go overseas (outsourcing our debt) and will not help us here in the long run but then, people have lost the anger of bureaucrats stealing their money and not always using it wisely.

 

The debt rarely has any direct effect. Not with the credit line that the USA has. It will eventually become a problem, but now is not the time to deal with it. Give it until the economy recovers, then start worrying about

 

That's because neither party wants to draw attention to the fact that they are both responsible for a debt that will take 1500 years to pay off at $300 billion per month. If people started thinking about that, they'd realize both parties are the problem, not the solution. Government is the BEAST that enslaves the whole world. The media is the FALSE PROPHET that fools the whole world into following the BEAST. And the ANTICHRIST is..........

 

That is according to CBO And all it requires is that we keep increasing spending a current rates.

 

$300 billion per month would be $3.6 trillion a year. Why would it take 1500 years to pay down a $16 trillion debt at $3.6 trillion a year?

And I know it is du jour for Republicans to make the false equivalency that Dems are just as responsible as Republicans. But history shows us otherwise. Much as conservatives are loath to admit it, tax cuts and military increases have driven the debt. Reagan Bush and Bush all scored record deficits under terms and left with record deficits. Clinton inherited a record deficit, raised taxes and trimmed military spending and left with a surplus. Obama inherited a gigantic deficit and the worst recession in 80 years, but has seen the deficit fall for the past three years.

 

Interest on the debt is over a half trillion per year, plus adding the current $1.4 trillion dollar annual deficits. It's like four steps forward, three steps back.

 

EXACTLY!! The number itself is unfixable. That's the little detail GOPers sit on their hands about just like they sat on their hands while Bush ran up the deficit from a surplus, and crashed the economy. Selective memory would be putting it politely.

 

Put into stark terms like that these are staggering amounts.

 

Debt doesn't matter anyway. Dick Cheney, GOP idol, says so.

 

Paying off the debt in terms of one dollar per second.....

A billion seconds was 32 years ago.

A trillion seconds was… just short of 32,000 years ago! Now multiply that by 16 + interest + $1.4 trillion annual deficits.

 

While I agree that the obsession with avoiding the end of tax cuts shows how insincere the concern for the deficit is among many wealthy and right wingers, I'd say the deficit certainly matters for our long term financial wellbeing.

Stimulus spending can only go so far, and the bank bailouts gave us an idea of just how much our economic growth was based on money that didn't actually exist.

The public is, unfortunately, just as myopic with respect to the long term as the elite often are. As a result, there's always a push for things like job growth without considering the side effects of any given policy.

We have to start reducing our public debt for multiple reasons, but part of it has to do with the growing influence of China. Currently, they're one of the biggest investors in our economy, just like they are in much of the rest of the world. While having them as a close trading partner isn't a bad thing, it is wise to limit how much leverage they have over us.

 

No, it's because very few, if any people asked about the deficit. The candidates were plenty happy to talk about it - as the article said, it was mentioned 18 times - each time by the candidates, unrequested.

Cite?

 

Gop to CBO deficit projection Is that to hard for you?

 

The whole deficit hyperbole by the right is simply political bluster. PinkSlip doesn't mind increasing the deficit by "giving" the military two TRILLION dollars extra (two trillion MORE than they asked for), and doesn't mind 5 trillion in deficit increases to pad the fat cat portfolios. His numbers simply are bogus and can't possibly NOT increase the debt. Besides, once again, Dick Cheney, the republican God of holiness, says the debt doesn't matter. Political propaganda is all it is by the rabid kook right.