No one expects Romney and Ryan to admit where they might disagree. Romney's math haunted by Ryan's

In Monday’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney promised again to get to a balanced budget in eight to 10 years while owning up to cuts from non-defense appropriations of only “about 5 percent.”

It was a surprisingly small number given the task ahead. And totally at odds with the experience of his running mate, Paul Ryan, who cut almost four times as much from the same accounts last spring and still couldn’t get his budget out of the red until 2040, when he had added savings from Medicare.


Indeed as House Budget Committee chairman, Ryan proposed to take nearly $1.06 trillion from the 10-year spending levels allowed in the 2011 Budget Control Act for non-defense appropriations. And even with this 19 percent cut, he still ended up with a deficit of $287 billion in 2022.

No one expects Romney and Ryan — joined at the hip in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign — to admit where they might disagree. But as a trailblazer for the GOP on budgets, Ryan has generated a wealth of data on difficult spending choices — numbers that raise real questions now about the credibility of what Romney has so far outlined.

The former Massachusetts governor is promising to reduce federal spending to 20 percent of GDP by the end of his first presidential term in 2016. Beyond that point, the campaign says it has not set a specific goal for what spending or revenues will be as a share of GDP. But Romney insists he can get to balance in the next decade even as he maintains defense spending at 4 percent of GDP.

“We’re going to cut about 5 percent of the discretionary budget, excluding military,” Romney said in the debate Monday. “Come on our website. You look at how we get to a balanced budget within eight to 10 years. We do it by getting, by reducing spending in a whole series of programs… There are a number of things that sound good, but frankly, we just can’t afford them.”

In fact, his website offers very few details on specific cuts. Ryan’s camp sidestepped questions from POLITICO, referring a reporter back to Romney headquarters, which declined to make available policy staff to answer budget questions.

To get to balance, Romney helps himself immensely by assuming more robust economic growth than the Congressional Budget Office would allow to Ryan, thereby generating billions more in revenues. But just changing GDP assumptions has far less impact on spending projections. And the real math contradictions with Ryan arise in looking at Romney’s promise to bring spending down to 20 percent of GDP in four years.

The CBO now estimates that spending will be running at about 21.6 percent of GDP in 2016 — with two caveats. First CBO’s baseline includes Medicare savings that Romney has rejected from President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform. And second CBO assumes that defense spending will have fallen to about 3.4 percent of GDP while Romney wants it up closer to 4 percent.

If adjustments are made for those two numbers, the spending gap to be closed by Romney is approximately 2.5 percent of GDP, or about $465 billion. And that roughly squares with the Romney campaign’s own estimates that it will need about $500 billion in annual savings to meet its goals in 2016.

How to do this?

Ryan’s budget leads the way with proposed changes worth more than $400 billion in reduced spending in 2016. Unlike Romney, he also assumes the contested Medicare savings incorporated in the 2009 Affordable Care Act, and his budget clearly meets the test of getting spending below 20 percent of GDP.

Mindful of this Romney has signaled support for many of the same ideas, including big changes in Medicaid and eliminating new funding to implement Obama’s healthcare reform.

“We’ll take that healthcare program for the poor and we give it to states to run because state’s run these programs more efficiently,” Romney said Monday. “As a governor, I thought, please, give me this program. I can run this more efficiently than the federal government and states, by the way, are proving it.

But Ryan’s non-defense appropriations cuts are worth about $90 billion to $100 billion alone in 2016 — and pose a real quandary for Romney.

On one hand he plainly needs the savings to get to his spending target. On the other, the severity of the reductions runs against Romney’s recent efforts to soften his image.

Amtrak and public broadcasting subsidies make for easy targets, and are grist for the conservative mill. But Romney has also talked enthusiastically of wanting to grow Pell Grant funding for lower income college students, a program targeted for deep cuts by Ryan.

At the same time, there are only limited options — beyond appropriations — for new cuts not already assumed by Ryan.

Medicare, Social Security, defense spending and interest payments on the federal debt are off the table. Together, they are expected to eat up about 14.4 percent of GDP in 2016.

Veteran and military retirement benefits would be hard for Romney to target. And with Iowa in play, both he and Obama have been leery of demanding deeper cuts from farm programs than those already being considered by Congress.