Yesterday we posted a ton of analysis of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposals, but I didn't have much sense of how it compared to the president's budget.
However, if you use the Tax Policy Center's data on revenues rather than the placeholder provided by Ryan's office (they still have not explained where they got their revenue projections, despite this strange response to TPC's findings), it turns out that Ryan's plan is actually less effective at balancing the budget than President Obama's. Check out my mash-up table below, which combines the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' analysis and the latest Congressional Budget Office estimate [PDF] of the president's budget. All figures are in percent of gross domestic product:
It's interesting to see that Obama's plan is more fiscally responsible in the midterm, if you measure that in terms of lowering the deficit. And Obama's plan doesn't radically change the entire social-insurance system or create an incredibly regressive tax regime.
-- Tim Fernholz
