An Ineffective Way to Track Presidential Candidate Federal Budget Plans

A nonprofit, nonpartisan group called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which tracks the effects of federal spending plans, released its latest U.S. Budget Watch. The group says the document effectively analyzes what the economic polices of the Republican candidates will do to U.S. debt. It cannot really do that. There is too little data to make the report’s conclusions valuable.

The specific conclusions of the organization were published in the group’s “Primary Numbers: The GOP Candidates and the National Debt.” It reviews the plans of Speaker Newt Gingrich, Congressman Ron Paul, Governor Mitt Romney and Senator Rick Santorum. The analysis predicts what these plans will do to the federal debt. At the beginning of the document, the organization admits its task is not entirely possible:

Each of these candidates has a detailed, albeit still incomplete, set of proposals to reduce both taxes and spending.

The term incomplete is worth emphasis.

For many of its conclusions, the group says:

We also rely on estimates from the campaigns themselves, media reports, as well as those produced internally.

Media reports are hardly a credible source for the specifics of how candidates say they plan to spend federal dollars and alter tax programs. Nonetheless, the policies of Ron Paul, the group says, will cut the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio to 76% by 2012. Newt Gingrich’s plans will move the ratio to 114% over the same period. All of this is based on further assumptions about what will happen to unemployment, GDP growth and entitlement spending — or at least they should be.

This committee’s report is one more attempt to show what the financial plans of Congress, the administration or presidential candidates will cause in terms of changes in the deficit and debt over a very long period. The conclusions are not compelling because they are based on assumptions about factors that cannot be known.

Douglas A. McIntyre