Did you take Bluffton's "bean poll" in April?

Unscientific but revealing results

Posted by Fred Steiner on May 21, 2017 - 8:54pm

Provided by Dr. James Bode
Associate Professor Emeritus, Philosophy
Ohio State University - Lima

On Tax Day April 19 people coming out of the Bluffton Post Office were handed a handful of beans, and asked how they would distribute federal taxes if they were in charge.

Those who participated, distributed their beans into jars labeled with categories of the federal budget.

For some the “Bean Poll” was a fun exercise. Others took it very seriously and spent considerable time deciding how best to distribute their beans. All the participants enjoyed a sense of empowerment in making decisions about our national priorities.

The Bean Poll was a project of AHEAD: Allen and Hardin for Election Action & Democracy, a growing group of Allen and Hardin County residents committed to nonviolent action for democracy.

While this was a non-scientific poll, the results tell us about how some of our neighbors feel. Comparing the average distribution of those who took the poll to the actual distribution in 2016 along with the budget offered by the President for next year, yields some interesting comparisons (2016 expenditures from Insidegovernment.org, all percentages rounded to whole numbers.)

Bluffton's poll results
The poll takers allocated roughly the same percentage to paying on the debt as was paid in 2016 but would have given about 33% less to defense and would have increased spending on veterans by 250%. Trump’s budget on the other hand increases spending on defense by 10% though it would increase spending on the Department of Veterans Affairs by a modest 6%.

Poll takers also felt that spending on infrastructure and housing in 2016 should be increased about 250% and that spending on energy, the environment and parks should be 400% higher. Trump’s budget decreases spending for Housing and Urban Development by 13%, Transportation by 13%, the Department of Energy by 6%, the Environmental Protection Agency by 31%, and Interior by 12%, it also cuts federal subsidies to Amtrak and eliminates support for Amtrak's long-distance services.

They felt that spending on education and the arts should be 10 times as high. Though they may have forgotten they were allocating for just federal dollars. If we look at both federal and state allocations, they were asking a more moderate increase of 33%.

The WH budget cuts the Department of Education by 14% and eliminates the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Arts along with NASA's Office of Education.

In Medicare and health expenditures they asked for a reduction of 20%. In Social Security and Labor, they suggested a decrease of almost 350%. Again, this large drop may have been because they knew that Social Security has a fund separate from the general revenue, which is still building a surplus.

Here the WH budget cuts Health and Human Services by 16% and the National Institutes of Health by 20%. One of the key campaign promises Donald Trump made was to keep Social Security and Medicare just as they are.

However, Mick Mulvaney, Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, says that after 2018’s budget there could be cuts to the benefits and possibly partial privatization of Social Security. As for Medicare, the Trump endorsed American Health Care Act would have reduced the funding for Part A Medicare by $117 million over 10 years.

The final category was for foreign aid where they thought we should be spending 350% as much as we did in 2016. The proposed budget cuts the State Department budget by 29% and Treasury International Programs by 35%.