This blog contains posts and comments written by students in Dr. Tufte's economics classes at Southern Utah University.
3/10/2010
Graphing Obama's Budget
Here is a post from Harvard professor Dr. Greg Mankiw about the president's budget from the CBO (Congressional Budget Office). As you can see, the CBO and the president disagree on where the line needs to be drawn as to what is too much spending. This comes as no surprise to anyone who follows Mankiw because he has written many posts against the healthcare bill and other bills that would increase spending. One thing to note about this graph is that it start's this year and moves in the future. So although the numbers are pretty accurate and the CBO would have a better idea than just about any other organization, this graph is only an prediction. As we have discussed in class, America is on the track to a rising GDP vs. Debt ratio. This is not necessarily a world-ending scenario but it is definitely something that the American people should be concerned about.
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3 comments:
On the Director of the CBOs' blog I found a graph and a bit of a break down that explains the differences in projections form each office. The difference in these figures is a testament to how soft of a science the making of projections is. Not that I or anyone else could do better.
I found an article which attempts to break down the additional deficit numbers into the different stimulus packages. It shows the projected impact of the stimulus on the next few years, its interesting stuff.
http://perotcharts.com/2009/02/projected-budget-deficit-congressional-budget-office-baseline-plus-stimulus-bill/
If I can offer a little historical perspective, what's interesting to me about this is that Mankiw was not, and is not, generally regarded as a conservative. He's been tarred with that a bit because he worked for the Bush administration (yet somehow the fact that Krugman worked for Reagan doesn't get much mention). Further, Mankiw was nearly run out of the Bush administration for telling the truth about his fiscal policies. Now he's pointing out the same thing about Obama's.
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