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THE OPPOSITE OF NO NUMBERS IS NOT IMAGINARY NUMBERS.
About a week ago, House Republicans emerged with a budget that was widely mocked because it contained no numbers and made no sense. This week, Representative Paul Ryan is proposing a budget that will be widely mocked because the numbers it contains make no sense. That's an improvement, to be sure, but it's the difference between a schoolchild missing a multiplication problem because he left it blank and missing a multiplication problem because he wrote down eleventy-seven. Numbers only matter if they're right.
These numbers are not right. Though nor is it clear they're really wrong. They're just sort of...made-up. The theory of the Republican plan appears to be that it allows Republicans to say that "The Republican budget achieves lower deficits than the Democratic plan in every year, and by 2019 yields half the deficit proposed by the president." And that's sort of true. If the Republican budget were adopted and its assumptions proved accurate, deficits would be lower than Obama is proposing. Also, the economy would collapse and seniors would die in the gutters and schools would crumble and Americans would literally choose to pay higher tax rates than they were being offered. But the estimated deficit would go down a bit.
Imagine if I wrote up a budget proposal for a small business and asserted that revenues will grow next year after Warren Buffett dumps several large bags of money on my doorstep. It would probably be true that if Warren Buffett dumped several large bags of money on my doorstep, revenues would increase. But he's not going to do that.
And we're not going to do this. We're not going to echo Hoover and radically slash spending amidst a demand slump. We're not going to voucherize Medicare and then tie the worth of the vouchers to a "premium payment" that grows more slowly than health costs and so is worth less every single year. We're not going to repeal the stimulus bill and let Pell Grants fall below inflation and let unemployment benefits expire and let Social Security benefits cease growing with the economy. We're not going to freeze funding for food stamps and home heating assistance and road repair and law enforcement. A five-year spending freeze is far beyond anything George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan ever contemplated. It's not what you do when you're responsible for running the government. It's what you propose when you're responsible for running the messaging.
I am, of course, ignoring one possibility. Look at the date. This could just be an April Fool's Day joke. And if it's not, then the fact that Ryan's communications director didn't move the unveiling to April 2nd suggests that the joke, in the long-run, is really on him.
COMMENTS (15)
What's wrong with imaginary numbers? You got a problem with sqrt(-1) = i = j. Huh?
Posted by: alex | April 1, 2009 5:03 PM
On the other hand, if it IS a joke, it totally pwns all the other things I've seen today.
Posted by: Opie Curious | April 1, 2009 5:04 PM
I'm waiting to see how the MSM reports this budget; because it is a farce and should be reported to be the farce it is. The idea that we are going to enact a spending freeze should have had everyone laughing their asses off; the DNC should be cutting commercials TONIGHT and buying time trumpeting the fact that the Republicans are going after Medicare and all social services as well as tax increases for well off seniors.
My favorite part: pick your own tax bracket. Wow. And then they say with a straight face that the Democrats have no fiscal discipline.
Posted by: Rhoda | April 1, 2009 5:07 PM
Imagine if I wrote up a budget proposal for a small business and asserted that revenues will grow next year after Warren Buffett dumps several large bags of money on my doorstep.
The company that I worked for a few years ago proposed a budget one year that had several million dollars of income from "URS". That turned out to be "unidentified revenue source". Then they went out of business.
Posted by: DonBoy | April 1, 2009 5:10 PM
you mean Calvin and Hobbes imaginary numbers, like eleventeen or seventytwelve?
Posted by: bdbd | April 1, 2009 5:19 PM
Forget the spending freeze. Yes, it's ridiculous to suggest we'll decrease deficits by getting rid of Medicare, but normal people won't understand that because they don't understand you could never get rid of Medicare.
What people do understand is that people will not give the government money for no reason!
It's ridiculous on its face is that Republicans propose to decrease deficits by offering rich people lower taxes, but expecting they will voluntarily choose to pay higher taxes!
Hey, this is like that supermarket I was going to open where I'd make money by putting a "50c" price tag on a box of pasta, but people would voluntarily choose to pay me a dollar a box!
Seriously, WHAT??? This is insane. These numbers are insane. This really is an April Fool's day budget.
Posted by: anon | April 1, 2009 5:26 PM
This is a stroke of genius- people like it and then they claim to be serious. People don't like it and it was an April Fool's joke. The Republican braintrust scores one on the potential of being sneaky even if tragically inept.
Posted by: Hawise | April 1, 2009 5:30 PM
I used to tell my statistics teacher that the reason I had such a difficult time understanding statistical math was because I didn't believe in imaginary numbers.
It didn't help my grade.
Posted by: News Reference | April 1, 2009 5:52 PM
I was wondering why the receipts seemed quirky. I spent most of the afternoon trying to reconcile the total and (assumed) individual receipts in the Republican budget with the tax reform and simply could not. I kept concluding that individual receipts should be about half what the Republican budget stated (even if the catch-all "broadening the tax base" meant eliminating itemized deductions). Now, I can actually go home, knowing that the problem was not on my end.
Posted by: S. Brown | April 1, 2009 5:53 PM
I thought i = jk. That seems to make more sense in this context.
Posted by: anonymous | April 1, 2009 5:55 PM
I thought i = jk. That seems to make more sense in this context.
While everybody else uses 'i' for sqrt(-1), electrical engineers use 'j'.
Posted by: alex | April 1, 2009 8:54 PM
On first glance, I thought they must be stealing my idea to boost revenues by having trained monkeys force feed a flock of golden geese, in order to massively increase their golden egg production, but now I see they aren't even that close to a realistic plan.
I am captivated by the "have Warren Buffet drop large bags of money on my front step" idea, though. I'm gonna try that. ;-)
Posted by: biggerbox | April 1, 2009 9:23 PM
Eleventy-seven has always seemed like a very plausible way of saying 117 to me. What grade-schooler solves multiplications problems by spelling out the answers anyway? "Eleventy-seven" would be a whimsical math teacher's creation seemingly, not a fourth grader's.
Posted by: Mike | April 2, 2009 2:06 AM
I agree with Mike. Eleventy-seven would be the right answer if the multiplication problem was "13 times 9 equals ?"
Eleventy-three would have been a better example for Ezra to use. It's prime, and so isn't the correct answer to any interesting multiplication problem where the factors are integers.
Posted by: Brock | April 2, 2009 9:47 AM
I prefer the imaginary good numbers of the GOP plan to the real awful numbers of the WH plan!
Posted by: mhfurlong | April 2, 2009 6:12 PM