'Fiddler on the Roof' explains the GOP tax bill. Here's how.
By Ruth Marcus Deputy editorial page editor November 15 at 7:04 PM
The supposed price tag for the Republican tax bill is $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Republicans would have you believe that the measure would sprinkle enough magical growth dust throughout the economy to wipe out that cost. Don’t believe them, but also: Don’t believe for a moment that the bill would cost a mere — mere! — $1.5 trillion. Peel away the budget tricks and it becomes clear that the real price tag would be hundreds of billions of dollars higher.
Which is where “Fiddler on the Roof” comes in — specifically “Sunrise, Sunset.” What once was a schmaltzy ballad is now the blueprint for Republican tax gimmickry.
The House and Senate measures differ in details, but both play the same hide-the-cost games to disguise the real price — the House to the tune of $400 billion, the Senate clocking in at $515 billion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. By the way, those numbers understate things, because they don’t include the cost of paying interest on the additional debt.
Some provisions have a “sunrise” — that is, they phase in over time. Of those, the priciest is the estate tax. To begin with, the House bill would merely — merely! — double the size of estates exempt from taxation, from $11 million per couple to $22 million. But beginning in 2024, the estate tax would be repealed entirely.
There is zero policy basis for this change. It serves only to display a lower price tag during the initial 10-year window and to mask the real long-term cost. Of the first-decade price tag of $172 billion, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, all but $39 billion accrues in the second five years.
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