In the Wall Street Journal (paywalled, so I could only read the free bits) this morning, we’re treated to this analysis:
What’s the difference between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney? More than $6 trillion.
…
That $6 trillion represents the difference between the amount Messrs. Obama and Romney want the federal government to spend over the next decade.
Now since this piece was behind the paywall and I couldn’t read the whole thing, I guess its possible that it went on to point out the key differences beyond the bottomline spending numbers but I doubt it.
So I will.
First of all, the six trillion is a 10 year total figure between baseline government spending numbers. Ezra Klein provides a bit longer excerpt of the piece and we see that, at the end of the next president’s first term, the difference is only 600 billion. Not chump change, but only a tenth of that attention grabbing headline. And of course this figure is much more important. 10 year budgets are fun to hit each other over the head with, but they don’t mean a damn thing. To see what I mean, let’s pretend were having this exact same 10 year projection fight, except the year is 2000. Candidates Bush and Gore have each released their projections for what spending will look like, but neither of them foresaw 9/11, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, TARP, or the stimulus. All of those happened within the 10 year window, and are responsible for something like half of the debt. Completely, necesarily absent from the projections of the day. (dont even get me started on social security’s 75 year projections). So playing these long term games is useless. The 600 billion figure is a bit more reasonable.
But the more important part between Obama and Romney is not the baseline spending numbers. If we’re going to keep pretending that we care about debt (which I presume we will right up until President Romney’s inauguration, at which point it will stop being important, because markets) then the effect of the plans on debt is more important than the raw spending number. And Mitt Romney will explode the debt! He wants to increase pentagon spending, maintain entitlements, and significantly slash taxes! All with no mention of how to pay for it. You could cut domestic discretionary spending as an offset, but this is Paul Ryan’s budget Romney is working with and that means you have to gut it by a whopping 80% to stay revenue neutral. Not even the most rabid tea partiers have the balls to carry through on that.
According to an analysis from back in April, Obama would increase debt slightly (+10% GDP), Romney would increase by way more (+26%), and the only candidate with a plan that would decrease debt was Ron Paul (-4%).
But no need to pay attention to the specific numbers (they’re 10 year projections!), just look at what the candidates say and do. Obama has a plan to slowly ratchet down spending and raise revenue in the medium term. Romney wants to reduce revenue and increase spending such that the offsets required to not explode the debt are not feasible.
520 Chestnut 
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