USA Today's Latest Scare Story on the Deficit

Suppose that President Obama announced tomorrow that he was going to increase spending on the military by an amount equal to 10 percent of GDP ($1.5 trillion a year or $6 trillion over the course of his presidency). This would not affect USA Today's calculation of debt burdens at all. Suppose that he announced that he would eliminate the corporate income tax and institute a special zero tax bracket for incomes over $100,000. This would also increase annual deficits by about $1.5 trillion. This change also would not affect the deficit as highlighted by USA Today in a front page story.

USA Today's deficit does not take account at all of projections of future income tax revenue or projected spending in most government programs. It only considers commitments to a narrow set of retirement programs and Medicare and it only counts the projected payments of taxes designated for these programs by people already in these programs.