The GOP’s dual trigger nightmare in one graph
On Wednesday, I posted a column about the GOP’s dual-trigger nightmare: the prospect that deficit reduction would now take place through a combination of the supercommittee’s $1.2 trillion spending trigger and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. That would cut the deficit by $5 trillion — actually, $6 trillion, once you include reduce interest payments — but in a vastly more progressive fashion than either party has even considered proposing. To get a sense of how progressive, here’s a graph comparing the spending cuts and tax increases in all of the major deficit-reduction packages proposed thus far. (Note: I’m measuring revenues against the tax code as it it is right now, and I’m not including savings on interest payments.)
(Ezra Klein)
It would be quite a turn of events if the GOP started by proposing the Ryan plan and ended with the dual-trigger plan.
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Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.
Suzy Khimm
Suzy Khimm covers the budget, economic policy, and financial regulatory reform. Before coming to Washington, she was based in Brazil and Southeast Asia, where she wrote for the Economist, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal Asia. Follow her on Twitter here, and email her here.
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Brad Plumer
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