Tag Archives: budget geekery

Many months ago, well before the super committee deliberations began and even before the debt ceiling talks that begat the super committee in the first place, President Obama announced that he would begin drawing down the number of troops in … Continue reading →

Ryan Grimm has an article in the Huffington Post that is essentially a public version of the private memo Stan Collender of Qorvis Communications has been sending around DC: the Joint Committee is doomed to fail because of partisanship, and … Continue reading →

Matt Yglesias posts the following graph to illustrate that “the Obama-era surge in government spending is largely a figment of the conservative imagination.” I sympathize with Matt’s argument, but charting only government spending on consumption and investment omits several other … Continue reading →

In his slides selling the emerging debt ceiling deal to the GOP caucus, Speaker Boehner writes that the proposed “super committee” charged with coming up with an additional $1.5 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years will be forced to … Continue reading →

Writers more qualified and skilled than I me will undoubtedly discuss the political viability of the Gang of Six’s deficit reduction proposal [PDF] today. Here, for example, is Ezra Klein. For now, I just wanted to make two observations about … Continue reading →

Roberton Williams has a terrific post at TaxVox that’s worth reading in full. The gist of his argument is that historical revenues as a percent of GDP are, contra Paul Ryan, not a normative benchmark for the government going forward. … Continue reading →

Baselines are confusing animals, even if they’re constructed with the best of intentions (which is often not the case). But if you want to see the effects of a policy in any year beyond the one you’re in now, you’ll … Continue reading →

Our team here at Pew released a report on Sunday – The Great Debt Shift [PDF] – that uses Congressional Budget Office data to show the drivers of the $12.7 trillion change in their projections of 2011 federal debt, going … Continue reading →

Yeoman’s work by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget [PDF] comparing the long-term deficit plans put forward by the president, Rep. Paul Ryan, and the deficit commission on an apples-to-apples basis. The money chart is below. Bear in mind … Continue reading →