Paul Ryan is a "chart guy"--but not necessarily a smart guy.

I keep hearing this vacuous sound-bite from the right (though it could just as easily come from the left): "We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem."  The phrase is intended to dismiss calls for higher taxes, since we can get by with what we have--we just need to spend less.  This may very well be true, but it must be proven (or, at least, discussed rationally).  Simply asserting it, as Paul Ryan did again today, does not make it true.

It is always dangerous to compare household budgets to federal budgets, but the point I am making is so simple that there is little risk here.  If I do not have enough to pay my bills at the end of the month, I should not necessarily conclude that I need to work a second job.  If it turns out the expenses I cannot cover are gratuitous, I may decide to cut back on those presumed luxuries (here I have a spending problem).  If I cannot afford food, however, the problem requires a different solution (here I have a revenue problem).  You should see, at this point, the problem--without discussing the precise spending I am doing, no chart will allow me to draw any other conclusion than that there is a discrepancy between my income and my spending.

Obama says US economy "poised to take off".

POTUS has been making claims that the US economy is poised to take off.  Meantime, Michelle Malkin of Twitchy.com and others on Twitter are calling the statement laughable.

While the economy may not take off, it seems it is indeed poised to do so if the deficit is any indication.  The deficit is shrinking at the fastest rate since WWII.

I am not attributing this fact to Obama or the WH.  Nevertheless, this seems like a good position from which to take off.  I have no doubt that Congress and POTUS can find a way to screw this up, but calling the statement laughable is a little disingenuous.

(Incidentally, consumer confidence and business spending are both up).

The deficit is shrinking.

The deficit is shrinking at a really fast pace.  In the last three years the deficit has gone from 10% of GDP to 7%.  Here are the various charts that are floating around. (Continued below).

This is good news, certainly.  But it doesn't mean that all our problems are solved.  As Slate's Matthew Yglesias points out, the deficit reduction is not a matter of successful economic policy by the Obama administration, but is, at least in part, "the flipside of the huge increases in the deficit that were associated with the recession."  And Mother Jones points out that a deficit that is too small can be just as dangerous as a deficit which is too big.  So, the upshot is that the conversation about the fiscal cliff need not include the question of the size of the deficit.