Fun with Graphs: Deficit Edition

I have seen two articles that point out that if we locked the doors of the Congress and prevented anything from happening the budget would come under control in a few years. The first was at Slate by Annie Lowrey and the second was at Daily Kos had a graphic created by the Incidental economist Blog using CBO data.

Note how revenue suddenly jumps to catch up with all those piles of liabilities we have. As the articles explain there are three actions that Congress must takesto keep us in debt. The first was extending the Bush Tax Cuts which were set to expire this year and will now expire next year. The other two they do every year because if they didn't a lot of people would be mad. One annual event is renewing the Alternative Minimum Tax dodge for middle income families. The second is circumventing the codified funding of Medicare to pay doctors rates higher than they would be under the original law.

Rather than do any of those unpopular things the Republican budget choose to do other unpopular things: cut a bunch of programs and privatize medicare. Paul Ryan shows how this will save us all a bunch of money in this video as shown on the daily show last night (I couldn't find the original video.) Check out those slick graphs.

The Daily Show - Ryan's Private Savings - Path to Prosperity
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As Stewart points out with his own graphs the elimination of the Bush Tax Cuts does essentially the same thing without destroying medicare and medicaid. Thats the rub for the Republican Party, as Scott Walker and other Governors have shown. There is always room in a budget to give rich people more money. Even when confronted by serious problems the Republican solution is give rich people more money. That was the agenda of the Federal Reserve during the Banking Panic and thats the plan now that the Bush fiscal Chickens have come home to roost.