By James Kwak
The Committee for a Responsible Budget recently released an analysis of the budgetary proposals of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates (hat tip Ezra Klein, who shows the key graph). In short, all of the candidates propose to increase the national debt by massive amounts relative to current law, which includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of this year.
CFRB compares the candidates’ plans to a “realistic” baseline that assumes the Bush tax cuts are made permanent and the automatic sequesters required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 are waived, among other things. Relative to that extremely pessimistic baseline, Santorum and Gingrich still want huge increases to the national debt; only Paul’s proposals would reduce it. Romney’s proposals would have little impact, but that was before his latest attempt to pander to the base: an across-the-board, 20 percent reduction in income tax rates.