Ezra Klein points to the chart at right as, “the graph that all budget discussions should start with.” I’m happy to oblige.

This graph, created by Austin Frakt, represents what the budget would look like under the Congressional Budget Office’s projection of what would happen if we simply did nothing. In other words, if the national health care law was fully implemented, the Bush tax cuts at all income levels fully expired, and so on. Ezra calls the do nothing approach a “pretty good plan,” while noting he would support additional spending cuts and health care cost controls.

But the do nothing plan has a lot of problems. As you can see from the chart above, it anticipates revenue as a percentage of the economy rising to over 30 percent. This would be a staggering level, blowing away the all-time record of 20.9 percent during the height of World War II. And the increase in taxes wouldn’t just hammer the rich, but increasingly fall on the middle class.