• Blue line (President Obama’s Budget): Table S-1 of the President’s budget.
  • Gray line (historic debt): Historical Budget Data from January 2015 Baseline from CBO, Tab 1. The parenthetical about pre-crisis average debt/GDP between 35 and 40% similarly comes from this table.
  • Yellow line (CBO long-term baseline): July 2014 Release from The 2014 Long-Term Budget Outlook from CBO, Tab 6. This is their “extended alternative fiscal scenario,” roughly CBO’s view of a current policy baseline rather than a current law baseline.
  • Green line (Bowles-Simpson proposal): Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Figure 4 and Figure 16. I interpolated the intervening years in table 4 to fill in the long-term line to fit the 5-year intervals they specified.
  • Red line (House Republican 2014 proposal): House Budget Committee’s Summary Tables S-1 and S-6. I interpolated the intervening years in table 4 to fill in the long-term line to fit the 5-year intervals they specified.
I feel bad about combining projections from different years and against different baselines onto a single graph, but I’m convinced that (1) there’s no better alternative; (2) I’ve used the best available data for a fair comparison; and (3) these technical problems do not undermine the analysis or conclusions of the post. I’m helped by comparing absolute levels in each case rather than deltas relative to baselines.