This morning I’d like to draw your attention to an interactive graphical comparison of the Obama and Ryan budgets courtesy of Mish Shedlock:
The formatting of the embedded code is goofy and it took a refresh or two for me to get it.
To my eye more than anything else this shows how much the bitter political debates in this country resemble nothing so much, as I believe George Will put it, as a football game played between the forty yard lines.
Note that neither budget does much to halt the inexorable and unsupportable growth in government spending. My interpretation of that is that both assume levels of private sector growth that are not apparent now (as I noted yesterday) and for which neither plan introduces a mechanism that might produce such growth. Either they’re just assuming some magical rate of growth or they’re ignoring the disastrous effects that rising government spending in the face of a stagnant private sector economy will have.
Shot, definitely.
In looking at the national debt number looks like Ryan’s proposal comes with a lower growth rate. Is is sustainable? No, is it the right idea (possibly badly executed) yes.
Is it worth considering Ryan’s proposals for the years beyond 2021? Admittedly, one is in the realm of speculation at best when projecting that far out, so the numbers have to be taken with a lot of grains of salt. Nevertheless, Ryan’s plan starts to bite harder after 10 years and works towards a much smaller government in those out years.
If it doesn’t accurately predict the future, it at least provides a straight forward philosophy with regard to the role of the state. I think Obama’s plan not only lacks detail to support his 12 year projection but fails to articulate an overarching philosophy to counter Ryan’s.