Discussion of the House Republican budget has focused mostly on the privatization of Medicare, the block-granting of Medicaid, and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And that’s appropriate, given the magnitude of the changes and widespread impact they would have. But those proposals are obscuring some other proposed shifts that, in any other context, would be plenty troubling for their own sake. This week I'll highlight five of them. So far, I've written about radical changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), changes in the eligibility age for Medicare, a crucial weakening of financial reform, and a neglect of infrastructure. Today I conclude by assessing just how much the Republican budget would actually reduce the deficit.

One reason you hear so many people describing the House Republican budget as “brave” and “serious” is that it would dramatically reduce the deficit. Yes, it would take health insurance away from millions of people, unravel the safety net, and allow America’s infrastructure to deteriorate further. But at least it would substantially improve the government’s fiscal outlook.

And yet that's not as true as you might think, particularly in the first decade. When House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled his proposal, he announced that it would reduce government spending by $5.8 trillion and reduce deficit spending by $1.6 trillion in its first ten years. But Ryan included in his spending reductions the savings from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That's fine; I think we all hope that prediction turns out to be true. But those savings have nothing to do with what Ryan is proposing specifically. (Or, if you want to get technical about it, those savings should be added to Obama’s budget and the current baseline, as well.) Once you adjust for that fact, it turns out the Republican budget would reduce spending, relative to current policy and expectations, by only $4.5 trillion.

“Only” is a slightly misleading term here, since $4.5 trillion dollars would still represent a large spending cut. But wait! The House Republican budget also calls for tax cuts—$4.2 trillion of them. In other words, the tax cuts in the House Republican budget would very nearly offset the spending cuts, leaving just $380 billion in additional savings over ten years.