Many Republicans have embraced Paul Ryan's proposal to balance the budget. I can't embrace his plan because it will do no such thing.



I questioned the idea in Government Shutdown Battle to Be Followed by Bigger Fight; GOP wants $4 Trillion in Cuts Over Next Decade; Is that Enough?



The proposal is now up to $6 trillion in cuts. However, $6 trillion over a decade is still not enough.



Congressional Budget Office Reply to Paul Ryan's Proposal



Inquiring minds may wish to consider the Congressional Budget Office reply to to Paul Ryan's Proposal.



Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan



CBO has conducted a long-term analysis of the major provisions of the proposal as described by the Chairman’s staff. The specifications may differ in some ways from the plan released today by Chairman Ryan in The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise.



The proposal specifies a path for all other spending ( excluding interest ) that would cause such spending to decline sharply as a share of GDP—from 12 percent in 2010 to 6 percent in 2022 and 3½ percent by 2050; the proposal does not specify the changes to government programs that might be made in order to produce that path. Total spending under the proposal would be about 21 percent of GDP in 2030 and almost 15 percent in 2050. The proposal also specifies a path for revenues relative to GDP—rising from 15 percent in 2010 to 18½ percent in 2022 and 19 percent in 2030 and beyond.



The resulting budget deficits under the proposal would be around 2 percent of GDP in the 2020s and would decline during the 2030s. The budget would be in surplus by 2040 and show growing surpluses in the following decade. Federal debt would equal about 48 percent of GDP by 2040 and 10 percent by 2050.



No Credible Proposal Can Ignore Interest On National Debt

Surplus by 2040?!

What About Defense Spending?

Sharing the Sacrifice

Where is the proposal to share the pain?

How about lowering wages and benefits of those in Congress?

How about reducing Congressional staff budgets?

How about making Congress immediately accept the same health-care plan it passed for the rest of the country?

If everything is on the table, where the hell is defense?



Ryan's Path to Prosperity

The president's recent budget proposal would accelerate America's descent into a debt crisis. It doubles debt held by the public by the end of his first term and triples it by 2021. It imposes $1.5 trillion in new taxes, with spending that never falls below 23% of the economy. His budget permanently enlarges the size of government. It offers no reforms to save government health and retirement programs, and no leadership.



Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president's budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.



A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015 , and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage's analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.

Preposterous Unemployment Estimate

Path to Prosperity

Household Data From Latest BLS Job Report

dropped

Parameters

The civilian labor force is currently 153.406 million (from the above BLS report)

The current number of employed is 139.864 million (from the above BLS report)

According to the Census Bureau Population Estimates the US will add about 2.5 million working age (16 years old and up) citizens a year from now until 2020.

Population numbers vary slightly year to year. I used an estimate of the average summing up the buckets from 16 to 100+ for the years in question and rounding the result.

Let's give the Heritage Foundation some leeway with its "by 2015" projection, say until March of 2015.



Unemployment Math

Additional Math

Monthly Job Growth 1999-2009

No Path to Prosperity