Brilliant chart

This was in today’s New York Times. It shows the effect of various (frequently discussed) cuts and how they would affect the US deficit. I found it really interesting. Click on the chart to see a big version.

From the accompanying article:

There is no easy way to put a big dent in next year’s projected deficit of $1.267 trillion, short of a dramatic rise in economic growth that would send new tax dollars cascading into the treasury.

…

The biggest and fastest-growing share of the budget still goes for mandatory entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that no elected official wants to cut, and for interest payments on the debt, which they cannot cut without inviting a default.

What if you kept just the entitlement programs and got rid of everything else? You’d have a modest surplus — about $109 billion. But there would be no one left to mail the benefit checks.