It is hard to take an optimistic view of the United States long term deficit and public situation in the absence of far reaching change. Perhaps Congressman Paul Ryan has some answers.

Consider some stark statistics. President Barack Obama’s proposed 2011 budget proposal includes an annual deficit of $1.267 trillion, equal to 8.3 percent of the projected gross domestic product (GDP). According to an estimate last year by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Mr. Obama’s budget proposals are expected to increase the deficit by $9.3 trillion between 2009 and 2019. The CBO now expects federal public debt to increase to $15 trillion in 2020, approximately 67 percent of GDP. Spending on interest is expected to triple between 2010 and 2020 in nominal terms, reaching 3.2 percent of GDP. As the CBO’s director points out, even these estimates may be optimistic, since they assume that all recently enacted tax cuts (not just those for upper income earners) will expire and that Congress will not extend relief to middle income taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax. The latest projections are that Medicare will go bankrupt in 2017 and Social Security in 2037.

While budget deficits were far lower under President George W. Bush than they are under Mr. Obama (except in Mr. Bush’s last year, when the financial crisis and the TARP program sharply increased outlays), Republicans do not have very much to brag about as stewards of public finances, either. Certainly the memories of such pork-laden outrages put forward by the former Republican Congress as the “Bridge to Nowhere” remain very much in mind, as do bloated farm and energy bills. Indeed, it was under Mr. Bush’s Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton (albeit with a watchdog Republican Congress), that there last was an actual budget surplus.

Enter Congressman Ryan’s proposals. The Wisconsin legislator, ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, has issued his Roadmap for America’s Future 2.0 (he did a previous version in 2008) that proposes to overhaul the federal budget completely on a number of fronts. Very significantly, the Congressional Budget Office has found that Mr. Ryan’s program will in fact end the budget deficits over time.

Mr. Ryan hones in on the entitlements, probably the major obstacle to fiscal responsibility. He would transform Medicare, which he says has a $38 unfunded liability, into a voucher system that would provide subsidies for the less well off but would means test benefits to the better off. As for Social Security, he offers the option of allowing participant to invest one third of their benefits in personal accounts, and also proposes a modest increase in retirement ages. (Individuals currently over 55 would receive Medicare and Social Security benefits under the current system.). On medical care, Mr. Ryan would end the employer deduction for benefits, while adding a tax credit.

Mr. Ryan also favors an overhauled and simplified tax code. He would combine an increased standard deduction, fewer itemized deduction and a business consumption tax to provide needed federal revenues.

The point here is not that every point of Mr. Ryan should be adopted without modification. Rather, as Newsweek economist Robert Samuelson writes, “we can no longer tinker. Delay in acting has already eliminated a long grace period to prepare for reduced retirement benefits or to wind down useless programs.” At least Mr. Ryan has given some focus, and as he says, a roadmap, to solving the hard fiscal problems that lay before us.