The new Republican rules will gut pay-as-you-go because they require offsets only for entitlement increases, not for tax cuts. In effect, the new rules will codify the Republican fantasy that tax cuts do not deepen the deficit.
It gets worse. The new rules mandate that entitlement-spending increases be offset by spending cuts only — and actually bar the House from raising taxes to pay for such spending.
Say, for example, that lawmakers want to bolster child credits for families at or near the minimum wage. One way to help pay for the aid would be to close the tax loophole that lets the nation’s wealthiest private equity partners pay tax at close to the lowest rate in the code. That long overdue reform would raise an estimated $25 billion over 10 years, but the new rules will forbid being sensible like that.
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For example, the cost to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent would be ignored, as would the fiscal effects of repealing the health reform law. At the same time, the new rules bar the renewal of aid for low-income working families — extended temporarily in the recent tax-cut deal — unless it is fully paid for.
Republicans only pretend to care about deficits when they're in the minority or a Democrat is in the White House or federal dollars are being appropriated for anything other than tax cuts (because in an adult, reality-based world, cutting revenue is indeed a cost) or when it will upset their base of rich, white oligarchs. As I've said before, Republicans would never run a business the way they want to run the government. Okay, so 2 years of throwing tantrums about the deficit, and now they immediately pursue irresponsible budgetary policies that will make the deficit even worse. What else?
A little-noticed detail in the new rules proposed by House GOP leaders would greatly increase the power of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee. As National Journal's Katy O'Donnell reports, the new rules say that, for fiscal 2011, the chairman will set spending limits without needing a vote.
So whatever happened to all that bitching and moaning about unprecedented power grabs, back room deals, and ramming things through without transparency and deference to congressional process? Again, apparently such very serious principles don't apply when you're pursuing a blindly ideological, factually and economically bereft agenda.
Paul Krugman sums up the stupidity of the Republican tax cut fetish nicely:
After all, if you never have to offset the cost of tax cuts, why not just eliminate taxes altogether?
I'm sure they would if they could, all the while going on all the Sunday talk shows and Fox News and telling everyone that having no source of income for the Treasury does not need to be addressed or offset and that having zero taxes on any one or any thing will actually 'widen the base' and 'increase revenue.'
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