Phony Budget Discipline (WashPost)

[coda]

Phony Budget Discipline

Thursday, May 20, 2004; Page A28


AFTER HAGGLING for weeks over the terms of a "pay-as-you-go" provision that would help give a spendthrift Congress some fiscal backbone, House and Senate Republican negotiators have produced a measure that is essentially make-believe. It purports to require that tax cuts or spending increases be paid for with offsetting tax increases or spending cuts. It pretends to impose that rule for the next 10 years.


But it then provides, in the very same section, that the rule expires on April 15, setting the stage for a new tax-cutting spree next year. The rule applies only to the Senate. And it exempts $27.5 billion in tax cuts from this year's pay-go requirements. That is enough to extend for a year the popular tax provisions that are expiring: the $1,000 child tax credit, marriage penalty relief and expansion of the 10 percent income tax bracket. In other words, the Senate could extend those provisions without having to pay for them with spending cuts or tax hikes or having to amass the 60 votes needed to overcome the pay-go rule. Indeed, there is nothing in the resolution that would prevent lawmakers from using the $27.5 billion exempted from pay-go to enact less politically popular tax cuts by a simple majority vote, and then pass tax cuts for the middle class with 60 votes.



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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41342-2004May19.html