Policy teams from the six groups taking part in the Solutions Initiative—the American Enterprise Institute, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network (representing the perspective of younger Americans)—all provided comprehensive plans to meet the budget challenge head on. The goal is sound fiscal policy over the long run, so that we put in place structural reforms that will resolve these problems for a generation or more.
The six plans contain specific policy recommendations, reflecting the groups’ unique perspectives and priorities, and look out 10 and 25 years into the future. To make the plans more easily comparable, we asked that they be developed from a common starting point based upon the Congressional Budget Office’s long-term projections. We also asked the Tax Policy Center and Barry Anderson (former acting director at CBO) to serve as independent scorekeepers, reviewing the plans and applying consistent analytical techniques to all of the proposals. The end result is an apples-to-apples comparison of spending, taxes, deficits, and debt that illustrates the impact and interaction of various policy choices made by the grantees.
From Six plans to balance the budget
pretty much covers the spectrum from Center-Left to Center-Right to Right-out-of-their-minds-at-Heritage.
