Balanced budget? What’s your plan?

All of the Republican presidential candidates say they favor a balanced budget. However, over five hours of televised debate last week, not one of them was asked to explain how this would be accomplished.

This is a critical omission that should be corrected in the next debate hosted by CNBC on Oct. 28. The main topic in that debate is supposed to be the economy and there is a direct link between the candidates’ fiscal policy proposals and their economic visions for the nation.

{mosads}The Democratic candidates have not been tested on their budget plans either but that chance will come on Oct. 13, when CNN hosts their first debate. They too should be pressed on the basic math behind their proposals.

The main reason for voters to be concerned about this issue is not the size of the deficit in any particular year, but its projected path in the years ahead. While deficits can be an appropriate near-term response to an economic slump, allowing the debt to grow faster than the economy over a long period of time ultimately slows growth and personal income from what it would be otherwise.

As the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has explained, “the high and rising amount of federal debt” projected under current law “would have significant negative consequences for both the economy and the federal budget.”

According to CBO, “Higher debt would reduce the amount of U.S. savings devoted to productive capital (resources that produce economic benefits over time) and thus would result in lower incomes than would otherwise occur, making future generations worse off.”

A CBO simulation found that inflation-adjusted national income per person would be about 50 percent higher over the next 25 years if we can keep the debt from growing any faster than the economy.

So concerns about the rising debt and the economy are in fact intertwined.

And that gets us back to the importance of hearing how the candidates would deal with the deficit.

In the Republican debates so far, some attention has been devoted to various line-item proposals, such as whether Social Security should be means-tested, or whether private equity fund managers should have their profits taxed as ordinary income rather than as capital gains. Similarly, the upcoming Democratic debate may shed some light on proposals to increase Social Security benefits or provide a free college education.

These are important questions but they miss the central issue: How does it all add up over time?

Shortly after taking office, the next president will have to submit a budget showing how all of his or her campaign promises fit together in way that does not worsen (and hopefully improves) the current fiscal outlook.

The budget is already on an unsustainable track. So new tax-cut or spending proposals, no matter how attractive in the abstract, will need to be paid for or the debt burden will simply expand. And even if new promises are fully paid for, there is the remaining question of how to close the structural budget gap we already have.

If the debates are not used to put the candidates’ headline-grabbing proposals within the context of an actual budget, they will fail to reveal which candidates have the best understanding of the nation’s fiscal and economic challenges.

Voters should not have to wait for the winter of 2017 to find out how, or whether, the next president plans to achieve a sustainable budget. They should hear about that now, during the campaign, when they can assess the candidates’ proposals and make informed judgments on their credibility.

Candidates must not get a free pass to offer a free lunch.

Bixby is executive director of The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that encourages fiscal responsibility in Washington.