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How the Deficit Affects You Personally

by Leonard Steinhorn
Mr. Steinhorn, a former political speechwriter, is an associate professor of communication at American University. He serves on the HNN corporate board, and is writing a book on the cultural impact of baby boomers, to be published by St. Martin's Press.
When President Bush sold his tax cut plan to the American people, he made sure to tell every American how much money they would be getting back from Uncle Sam. In 2001, he trotted out a typical "tax family," claiming that his plan would return $1,600 to these average Americans. This summer he happily took credit for the $400 per child tax rebate many Americans received in the mail. It's our money, he told us, not the government's, and we deserve to get it back.

But his sales pitch is a bit different now with the $87 billion he wants Americans to pony up for his war in Iraq. At no time has he specified that $87 billion translates to about $300 for every American man, woman and child. At no time has he trotted out a typical "Iraq tax family," showing how a family of four would owe about $1,200 this year for Iraq and perhaps more in subsequent years. At no time has he admitted that this Iraq tax may not only wipe out but trivialize whatever benefit most Americans expect to receive from his tax cut.

The president is not the only politician who uses these political communication techniques. All politicians know that when you want to sell people a policy they might like, you tell them how it would affect them personally. But when you want to sell the public on a more distasteful idea, you leave the specifics as vague as possible -- the less they understand them, the better.

It was a lesson politicians learned with a vengeance a little over a decade ago, when the public barely raised a peep about the trillions in federal debt accumulated during the Reagan-Bush years, but nearly revolted when a mini scandal broke over the way some members of Congress were abusing their banking privileges and kiting checks for a few hundred or a thousand dollars. A trillion dollars meant nothing to us, but $900, that was real money.

Illustration by Joshua Brown, Historiansagainstwar.org

Just imagine how our national tax and budget debate would change if the politicians and news media began describing the federal deficit and debt in terms we could taste, feel and understand. Our federal deficit this year, roughly $550 billion, seems incomprehensible to most Americans, so mammoth that it no longer seems tangible. But now translate that to every American man, woman and child. Instead of talking in billions, what if Dan, Peter and Tom told us every day that each of us is now about $1,900 more in hock this year than we were a year ago?

Or think about the total debt we'll accumulate during our four years under George W. Bush -- according to reliable estimates, about $2 trillion. That's about $6,900 each of us will owe, every American man, woman and child, and especially the child, who will have to pay it off the rest of his or her life. For a family of four, the Bush debt amounts to liability of nearly $28,000, a hefty sum that amounts to almost two-thirds the annual median income of the typical American household.

The president obviously has no political interest in pitching his Iraq tax and deficits the same way he sold us on his tax cut plan -- showing how it affects us personally. Perhaps that's what he meant by "fuzzy math" in the 2000 presidential campaign.