Republicans are trying to hide the full cost of their planned tax cuts from voters — by preemptively smearing the scorekeepers.
The 2017 Trump tax cuts came with a massive price tag: The legislation added $1.9 trillion to deficits over a decade, as estimated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in coordination with the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). That figure even accounted for the law’s expected economic growth effects, which Republicans touted at the time. The law’s proponents didn’t want to hear it and kept insisting their tax cuts would fully pay for themselves.
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A huge portion of those tax cuts are scheduled to expire next year, and the fight to prevent more inconvenient numbers from coming out has already begun.
The CBO and JCT have released several estimates for how much red ink would be required to extend the tax breaks. Each time they release a new estimate, the price grows. In fact, since the first estimate was released back in 2018, the cost of extension has grown by about 50 percent, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently noted. That’s the equivalent of an additional $1.2 trillion through 2034, for a total price tag of more than $4 trillion over a decade.
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This swelling cost is partly because of higher-than-expected inflation and income growth over the past few years. But given that the proposal’s cost as a share of the overall economy (which is also boosted by inflation and income growth) has also risen, there are other factors at play. They include some unanticipated abuse of GOP-preferred tax breaks, as well as workarounds for what were supposed to be revenue raisers (such as a cap on state and local tax deductions).
In any event, this rising price tag is bad news for Republicans. Should they gain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress next year, they’re hoping to fast-track more tax cuts on a party-line vote. Once again, Republicans are expected to (falsely) claim their tax cuts fully pay for themselves and thus won’t worsen the federal deficits they sometimes claim to worry about.
So how is the GOP preparing for next year’s tax battle? By preemptively fighting with the refs. And even worse, by potentially incapacitating them.
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Last week, House Republican leadership sent around a “questionnaire” to its members in what appears to be prep work for discrediting or kneecapping the politically neutral CBO, which is tasked with scoring legislative bills. An email with letterhead from House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) said the House Budget Committee was trying to assess the “responsiveness, accuracy, and perceived bias” of the CBO, specifically to help “strategic and legislative planning” for the party’s upcoming tax-and-budget legislation.
The questionnaire, whose existence was previously reported by Politico, was distributed as a Google form. The version I obtained through a congressional staffer includes leading questions such as, “Do you believe the CBO needs to be audited?” and “please provide an anecdote of when CBO was UNHELPFUL.” (It then asked for an anecdote for when CBO was helpful.)
It also asks of those who describe the agency as “unsatisfactory” or “failing” to identify the agency’s “biggest problem.” The first suggested option? “Perceived bias.”
To be clear, the CBO has gotten things wrong before. It has excellent, hard-working staffers who produce objective analyses, but forecasting is an inherently fraught business. That’s especially true given the constraints the agency faces. Deadlines are tight. Congress also generally requires the CBO’s budget forecasts to assume current law continues as written, even when lawmakers openly plan to re-up expensive measures (or repeatedly delay the start of unpopular tax increases).
But the idea that the CBO is somehow politically biased against Republicans is laughable. Its current director, Phillip Swagel, is a Republican who was selected partly by GOP congressional leadership and previously served in the George W. Bush administration. More importantly, the CBO’s staffers are nonpartisan civil servants with expertise in their fields, and they use the most up-to-date economic research and government data to produce the best estimates possible.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tid=mc_magnet-opcongress_inline_collection_20
Lots of outside organizations produce their own estimates for the costs and economic impacts of bills, but the CBO’s numbers are the ones that officially matter for legislative procedure. For that reason, the agency has occasionally taken flack when its numbers proved politically inconvenient for Republicans, such as when it found that a repeal of Obamacare would cause millions of people to lose their insurance or that higher immigration levels have likely boosted economic growth. But, usually, the blowback just involves a nasty PR campaign, not a systematic attempt to dig up dirt on the agency and rally lawmakers against it.
It’s unclear as yet what will come of this exercise. When he was president before, Donald Trump showed no qualms about undermining or blowing up world-renowned, independent statistical agencies full of talented experts. It’s reasonable to worry his acolytes might try something similar here.
For the party of alternative facts, few things are more dangerous than an institution that tries to be a neutral arbiter of truth.
The 2017 Trump tax cuts came with a massive price tag: The legislation added $1.9 trillion to deficits over a decade, as estimated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in coordination with the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). That figure even accounted for the law’s expected economic growth effects, which Republicans touted at the time. The law’s proponents didn’t want to hear it and kept insisting their tax cuts would fully pay for themselves.
Sign up for Democracy, Refreshed, a newsletter series on how to renovate the republic.
A huge portion of those tax cuts are scheduled to expire next year, and the fight to prevent more inconvenient numbers from coming out has already begun.
The CBO and JCT have released several estimates for how much red ink would be required to extend the tax breaks. Each time they release a new estimate, the price grows. In fact, since the first estimate was released back in 2018, the cost of extension has grown by about 50 percent, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently noted. That’s the equivalent of an additional $1.2 trillion through 2034, for a total price tag of more than $4 trillion over a decade.
ADVERTISING
This swelling cost is partly because of higher-than-expected inflation and income growth over the past few years. But given that the proposal’s cost as a share of the overall economy (which is also boosted by inflation and income growth) has also risen, there are other factors at play. They include some unanticipated abuse of GOP-preferred tax breaks, as well as workarounds for what were supposed to be revenue raisers (such as a cap on state and local tax deductions).
In any event, this rising price tag is bad news for Republicans. Should they gain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress next year, they’re hoping to fast-track more tax cuts on a party-line vote. Once again, Republicans are expected to (falsely) claim their tax cuts fully pay for themselves and thus won’t worsen the federal deficits they sometimes claim to worry about.
So how is the GOP preparing for next year’s tax battle? By preemptively fighting with the refs. And even worse, by potentially incapacitating them.
Advertisement
Last week, House Republican leadership sent around a “questionnaire” to its members in what appears to be prep work for discrediting or kneecapping the politically neutral CBO, which is tasked with scoring legislative bills. An email with letterhead from House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) said the House Budget Committee was trying to assess the “responsiveness, accuracy, and perceived bias” of the CBO, specifically to help “strategic and legislative planning” for the party’s upcoming tax-and-budget legislation.
The questionnaire, whose existence was previously reported by Politico, was distributed as a Google form. The version I obtained through a congressional staffer includes leading questions such as, “Do you believe the CBO needs to be audited?” and “please provide an anecdote of when CBO was UNHELPFUL.” (It then asked for an anecdote for when CBO was helpful.)
It also asks of those who describe the agency as “unsatisfactory” or “failing” to identify the agency’s “biggest problem.” The first suggested option? “Perceived bias.”
To be clear, the CBO has gotten things wrong before. It has excellent, hard-working staffers who produce objective analyses, but forecasting is an inherently fraught business. That’s especially true given the constraints the agency faces. Deadlines are tight. Congress also generally requires the CBO’s budget forecasts to assume current law continues as written, even when lawmakers openly plan to re-up expensive measures (or repeatedly delay the start of unpopular tax increases).
But the idea that the CBO is somehow politically biased against Republicans is laughable. Its current director, Phillip Swagel, is a Republican who was selected partly by GOP congressional leadership and previously served in the George W. Bush administration. More importantly, the CBO’s staffers are nonpartisan civil servants with expertise in their fields, and they use the most up-to-date economic research and government data to produce the best estimates possible.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tid=mc_magnet-opcongress_inline_collection_20
Lots of outside organizations produce their own estimates for the costs and economic impacts of bills, but the CBO’s numbers are the ones that officially matter for legislative procedure. For that reason, the agency has occasionally taken flack when its numbers proved politically inconvenient for Republicans, such as when it found that a repeal of Obamacare would cause millions of people to lose their insurance or that higher immigration levels have likely boosted economic growth. But, usually, the blowback just involves a nasty PR campaign, not a systematic attempt to dig up dirt on the agency and rally lawmakers against it.
It’s unclear as yet what will come of this exercise. When he was president before, Donald Trump showed no qualms about undermining or blowing up world-renowned, independent statistical agencies full of talented experts. It’s reasonable to worry his acolytes might try something similar here.
For the party of alternative facts, few things are more dangerous than an institution that tries to be a neutral arbiter of truth.
