The Post probably didn’t have room in the piece for such small points, but when it told readers that the Ryan plan:

“calls for spending cuts and tax changes that would put the nation on course to wipe out deficits and balance the budget by 2040.”

It would have been reasonable to point out that it gets to this balance by virtually eliminating the non-defense, non-Social Security, and non-health care portions of the budget. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the Ryan plan (Table 2), all spending on items other than health care and Social Security would be reduced to 4.75 percent of GDP by 2040 and to 3.75 percent of GDP in 2050.

The defense budget is currently over 4.0 percent of GDP and Representative Ryan has indicated that he wants to leave it at this level. That would leave little for the Justice Department, Education Department, Park Service, education, transportation and everything else government does in 2040 and nothing in 2050. That fact would have been worth pointing out in this article.