That's right! Let's DO NOTHING.
We hear lots of jawboning from both the right and the left about what needs to be do to solve the deficit/debt problem. But wait! Why do we have to do anything. Check out the chart below.
If Congress does nothing, nothing at all, they just go home and sit on the porch, the deficit will go down to about 1% of GDP, and the debt falls from a peak of 73% of GDP to about 60% as shown in the figure below.
Also note that this "Do Nothing" performance is much better than if Congress extends all current (essentially Republican) policies.
Well, where do all these reductions come from? As explained in the Center for American Progress article that has these figures,
- $1.2 Trillion dollars in spending cuts will be triggered if Congress does nothing,
- $3 Trillion dollars in revenue increases will occur when the Bush tax cuts expire,
- $2 Trillion dollars from Congressional inaction on the alternate minimum tax and the sustainable growth rate formula in Medicare.
- The president's fiscal commission "would leave the country with about $1 trillion in additional debt compared to simply doing nothing"
- The republican budget plan passed by the House "would incur approximately $1.5 trillion more debt than doing nothing at all".