Anyone can make specious claims about the federal budget. Witness, for example, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s recent assertion that our federal government is not going broke, and his party’s broader argument that “Medicare as we know it” is somehow sustainable with just a few tweaks. It is much easier to engage in such rhetorical deception than it is to draw up a serious long-term proposal to fix the nation’s debt crisis. Not only do such budget plans invite close scrutiny, but they are also far more labor-intensive than simply casting demagogic stones at the plans of others. This may explain why, to date, majority Senate Democrats have failed even to present a budget plan this year.

Fortunately, we need not rely on Democratic senators for leadership. The Peterson Foundation’s Solutions Initiative brought together six think tanks — two conservative, two liberal and two centrist — and challenged each to present a detailed plan to solve our fiscal crisis-in-waiting, using the same uniform assumptions. Because everyone had to begin with the same set of facts, and everyone had to war-game the same budget scenario over the coming decade and beyond, the typical demagoguery that surrounds budget battles was rendered moot. The end result is a pure, apples-to-apples comparison of six visions for America.