Republicans Are NOT Fiscally Responsible - And They're Trying To Hide That

Catherine Rampell (The Washington Post) explains the nasty trick Republicans want to use to hide the cost of their tax cuts for the rich: 

Senate Republicans on Wednesday decided their party alone will control how math works. This is a pressing legislative question at present, because pretzeling budgetary outcomes into prettier shapes and sizes will determine whether Republicans can pass President Donald Trump’s promised tax cuts.

Those cuts are very expensive. They include not only extensions of the 2017 tax law provisions (set to expire this year), but they also lower corporate rates as well as carveouts for tips, auto loan payments and other goodies. In total, Trump’s preferred tax agenda could cost between $5 trillion and $11 trillion over the next decade.

This is inconvenient. Republicans like to pretend they’re fiscal conservatives (at least some of the time). They would prefer not to acknowledge the hefty price tag, and they also don’t want to fully offset it with unpopular spending cuts.

So, they’ve devised a cheat. Rather than admitting how much their tax agenda would cost, they are simply asserting that they get their first $4 trillion — free!

Here’s how: Republicans say that because some (expiring) tax cuts have been in place since 2017, extending them shouldn’t be recorded as costing anything, because they wouldn’t feel different. This is ... not how budgets work. As I’ve explained before, it’s like saying even though your car lease has ended, leasing another car should count as “free” because you got used to the convenience of having a vehicle around.

Normally, neutral referees are available to call out this kind of funny business.

First, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office “scores” significant legislation, to determine how much a bill would change revenue and spending in the years ahead, compared with what would happen if Congress allowed existing law to remain as it is. Then, a person called the Senate parliamentarian would confirm that the CBO number matches what lawmakers had previously agreed their bill would cost. If it doesn’t, the bill becomes much harder to pass.

Republicans have been trying to persuade the Senate parliamentarian to adopt their preferred math. So far, the parliamentarian has delayed making a ruling. But on Wednesday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) announced the parliamentarian won’t ever need to decide. He plans to do what the party wants either way.

“I have the authority to determine baseline numbers for spending and revenue,” Graham said in a statement. Under that authority, he said, he can use the special book-cooking math — a “current policy baseline” — that grants his party $4 trillion in freebies.

In other words: 2+2=5, if Republicans decree it so.