Center for American Progress Details What Spending Cuts Could Look Like

Attemping to show how deep policymakers would have to cut spending to reduce the deficit to primary balance in 2015,  the Center for American Progress today released a paper titled “A Thousand Cuts”.

The paper begins by looking at the projected 2015 deficit in the President's FY 2011 Budget, and then presents five different budget scenarios looking at how a set proportion of spending cuts could be used to reduce the deficit to primary balance in 2015 (a balanced budget except for interest payments). The five scenarios offer an illustrative picture for the types of spending changes that would be necessary to meet this goal. The Center did not include large revenue increases in its research in an effort to show the huge impact of using only spending cuts to reach balance.

Stay tuned, as we will have more analysis of these five scenarios shortly.