For Americans, deficit pain is felt close to home

By Pascal Fletcher

MIAMI (Reuters) - Christopher O'Neill is worried about the deficit.

The deficit, that is, in his personal income after the 26-year-old Miami finance analyst was forced to find a temporary job paying $20,000 a year less than he earned until January when he was laid off from his auditor's post in Miami.

From Miami to Milwaukee, ordinary Americans are counting the cost to their own lives of the recession, which has seen the U.S. budget deficit swell to a record $1.4 trillion in the 2009 fiscal year -- the biggest shortfall since World War Two.

While President Barack Obama and his top advisers rack their brains over how to goad the sluggish U.S. economy back into robust growth that boosts jobs and exports and reduces debt, most citizens are still struggling to fill the gaps in their jobs, incomes and lives caused by the downturn.

"What budget? Which one of mine do you want to start with?" said Wilma Kemper, 59, a retired office worker in Nashville, Tennessee, when asked about the federal budget deficit.

"Do you think the politicians care what we little people think about the national budget when we don't have a single say-so about it?," she added bitterly.

A new Thomson Reuters/Ipsos poll confirms the impression that many Americans find it difficult to see beyond the recession-muddled fog of their daily lives to the more elevated zone of policy-making and the relevance of the budget deficit.

The poll shows that most Americans, when asked about the economic issue they're most concerned about, rate the federal budget deficit well below high unemployment.