Ryan's Budget Is Better Than You Know

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Both the Left and the Right are grousing about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's 2013 budget. Both are factually wrong.

For conservatives, there are two amazing fundamentals in Ryan's budget. First is how quickly it gets spending, deficits, and debt under manageable control. Emphasis on the word manageable, not completely solved.

Ryan's budget actually cuts the total level of federal spending in nominal dollars for each of the first two years. Total federal spending actually declines from 2012 to 2013, and then declines again from 2013 to 2014. That would be the first and only time that has happened since the beginning of the Eisenhower Administration 60 years ago, when we were still climbing down from runaway wartime spending. Total federal spending under Ryan's budget does not rise above the 2012 level until 2016. The total increase in federal spending over those four first years of Ryan's budget is 1.8 percent. Those would be the four most tight-fisted years in federal spending growth since the Eisenhower Administration as well.

By 2015, after just three years under Ryan's budget, federal spending would be nearly back to its long-term, historical average since World War II as a percent of GDP, at 20.1 percent, down from 24.3 percent today. That is a cut in federal spending of 4.2 percent of GDP in just 3 years. Even with Ryan's proposed reductions in individual and corporate tax rates, federal revenues would be restored to their long-term postwar average as a percent of GDP as well. That would leave the deficit in 2015 at a quite manageable 1.7 percent of GDP, compared to roughly 9 percent on average under President Obama.

Balancing the Budget

Most amazingly, even under CBO's static scoring, the federal deficit in actual nominal dollars would be reduced to $182 billion by 2017, the fifth year of the budget. That compares to $1,327 billion, or $1.327 trillion, today. So in just five years, even under CBO's static scoring, the deficit is reduced by 86 percent. The deficit is less than 1 percent of GDP by that year, at 0.9 percent, where it stabilizes for 6 years to the end of the 10-year budget window.