The Concord Coalition would like to draw your attention to a new paper entitled "Setting Expectations: Why Baselines Matter in the Presidential Campaign and for the Fiscal Future."

As the Presidential candidates discuss their fiscal policies, the issue of baselines becomes crucial. The new Congressional Budget Office baseline shows annual deficits for the next ten-years totaling $2.3 trillion. While CBO gives a valid, neutral benchmark against which to measure proposed changes in tax and spending policies, the campaigns are using a much different standard for their proposed policies.

The campaigns' preferred baseline closely follows Concord's own "Plausible Baseline" with a ten-year deficit of close to $8 trillion. Using this baseline makes their proposals appear more fiscally responsible than they are. Furthermore, the implications for the living standards of future generations in accepting such "low standards" on which to judge our nation's fiscal policy are dramatic and deleterious.
 

The Issue Brief can be found at:

http://www.concordcoalition.org/issue-briefs/2008/0911/setting-expectations-why-baselines-matter-presidential-campaign-and-fiscal-fu