quote:The second [boxed line in the figure] shows spending on everything other than health care and Social Security, which is projected to fall in half as a share of GDP in just 10 years, and eventually to fall to levels comparable to those during the Coolidge administration — even as the US presumably maintains a post-isolationism-level military force.
posted
No, you're reading it wrong. The budget projects unrealistic gains in GDP, not budget cuts. That is, absent those gains in GDP, there'd be no return to such levels of spending. It wouldn't lead to any "immediate collapse" because it wouldn't happen; the Ryan budget's proposed spending on those things over the next ten years isn't a radical departure from current spending levels -- the only way the amounts will be reduced to that percentage is if growth is phenomenal, leading to pretty much the opposite of "wrecking the government and civil society."
What's more, that's only an aggregate percentage, so your statement about everything in that bucket being reduced (ignoring that "reduced" is the wrong word) is also wrong; some programs would be maintained, others would be cut.
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quote:No, you're reading it wrong. The budget projects unrealistic gains in GDP, not budget cuts. That is, absent those gains in GDP, there'd be no return to such levels of spending.
Ah, I see what you're saying. But are they really predicting that GDP will (roughly) double in ten years? That's the only way non-entitlement spending could "fall in half as a share of GDP" without significant cuts.
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posted
I'm actually mistaken, reading it. The Ryan budget does target percentages, not numbers (though they're based in overly optimistic ideas of economic performance, as shown by response to the Heritage projection). That's the only way it keeps the short term numbers looking decent. However, the long term numbers still look decent even if one doesn't assume unnamed short term cuts.
The Ryan budget is no panacea; it isn't really a budget, either. It is mostly a statement of policy goals and potential areas of compromise that, even discounting the ones with handwaving, represent a remarkably approachable set of options. There's a lot to like in the budget, too, such as revenue-neutral tax code simplification. As a budget it fails. As the starting negotiating point for the GOP, it succeeds pretty well.
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posted
Sure, fair enough. I'm definitely not saying it was a political mistake for the Repubs to get behind it.
But it does seem to me that Obama's budget would actually work OK as a budget, not just as an opening rhetorical maneuver. In that sense, comparing the defects in Ryan's proposal to problems with Obama's is a sort of false equivalence. One of them, as you say, isn't really a budget. The other one is.
Thanks for clarifying about the math side of things, but I'm not sure I get this:
quote:That's the only way it keeps the short term numbers looking decent. However, the long term numbers still look decent even if one doesn't assume unnamed short term cuts.
In what sense to the long-term numbers look decent and the short-term numbers indecent? (I guess I'm not sure which numbers you mean. The 6 and 3 percent figures for non-entitlement spending?)
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posted
fugu: if you are committed to seeing the poor pay less and the rich pay more, what in Ryan's "budget" is approachable?
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posted
Tom: the tax restructuring is fantastic if that's your goal, as is lowering the corporate income tax (I've always found your love of the corporate tax amusing, since it has disproportionately high negative effects on low and middle income earners compared to high income earners).
The medicaid and medicare changes themselves are not particularly desirable, but they indicate a high willingness to bargain in those areas by the GOP. The basic idea isn't even bad, especially for medicaid, which only sustains low costs because it pays providers far less than the cost of providing service, which is then made up for on net out of private insurance payments. That needs to change to have a chance at a serious healthcare system; a system where the direct providers aren't even able to cover their basic costs isn't sustainable, and rosy numbers under such a system are an illusion, not a sign of efficiency.
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