Stan Collender, who writes the economics blog “Capital Gains and Games,” slams Republicans for abandoning their concern for the deficit as soon as the election was over:
There is now no doubt that all of the GOP talk during the campaign about reducing the deficit was nothing more than a ploy to get elected and that Republicans have no plans to do anything but make the federal government’s red ink larger than it already is and would otherwise be.
The proof? Take a look at this outstanding report by Bob Greenstein and Jim Horney of The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — two of the most respected federal budget analysts anywhere — published just before Christmas about how House Republicans are about to put in place new budget procedures that make it likely the deficit will be increased rather than decreased.
The first is a change in the pay-as-you-go rules that will no longer require proposed tax cuts to include offsets so that there’s no increase in the deficit. Under the new GOP rules, that would only apply to proposed increased in mandatory spending. In addition, proposed mandatory spending increases could only be offset with reductions in other mandatory spending. The previous PAYGO rule that allowed the offset to be either spending cuts or revenue increases would be eliminated.
The second change is that the reconciliation procedures in the congressional budget process would be changed so that they could be used to increase the deficit if the increase was the result of a tax cut (The House democratic leadership several years ago revised the reconciliation rules so that it could be used only to reduce the deficit).
Finally, as the CBPP report says, the new rules would allow a number of potentially huge deficit increasing policies to be adopted without offsets:
- Extending or making permanent the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts (including the tax cuts for the highest-income taxpayers) and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax;
- Extending or making permanent the hollowing out of the estate tax included in the just-enacted tax-cut compromise legislation; and
- Legislation to provide a major, costly new tax cut — a deduction equal to 20 percent of gross income for “small businesses,” which Republican lawmakers typically have defined very expansively so the term covers a vast swath of firms and wealthy individuals that do not resemble what most Americans think of as a “small business.”
Ezra Klein quotes Paul Krugman, who puts it more bluntly:
Nobody, and I mean nobody, in a position of influence within the GOP cares about deficits when tax cuts for the affluent are on the line. Deficit hawkery is just a stick with which to beat down social programs.
Strong words, but can anyone show they are not true?
Compare the GOP’s approach to tax cuts with the Democratic Party’s approach to health-care reform. Actually, you can even compare the GOP’s approach to health-care reform with the Democratic Party’s approach to health-care reform. Whatever you think of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats went to great pains to provide offsets, which is why Republicans could accuse them — over and over again — of cutting $500 billion from Medicare. When the GOP passed the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, they made no cuts and created no new taxes and simply put the whole thing on the deficit.
So help me out, dear readers: What’s the evidence that the GOP ever allows deficits to come between them and the policies they want to pass?
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