Obligatory budget post

I keep on hearing about a "pivot," but where is it?  Via Greg Mankiw and Arnold Kling, here is Keith Hennessey:

We can draw five important conclusions from this graph:

  1. At 8.3% of GDP, the proposed budget deficit for 2011 is still extremely high.
  2. President Obama is proposing larger budget deficits than he did last year.
  3. For 2011, the most relevant year of this proposal, the President is proposing a budget deficit that is 2.3 percentage points higher than he did last year (8.3% vs. 6.0%).
  4. Using his own numbers, the President’s proposed budget deficits will cause debt as a share of the economy to increase.
  5. Under the President’s proposal, budget deficits begin to increase as a share of the economy beginning in 2018.

Adding further detail to (4), the President’s own figures show deficits averaging 5.1% of GDP over the next 5 years, and 4.5% of GDP over the next ten years.  They further show debt held by the public increasing from 63.6% of GDP this year to 77.2% of GDP ten years from now.  I think it’s a safe assumption that CBO’s rescore of the President’s budget will be even worse.

Addendum: Brad DeLong objects.

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