Members of the new Republican majority in the House wasted hardly a minute last week to prove themselves hypocrites on deficit reduction and congressional spending. Indeed, their first order of business after taking their oaths was to approve House rule changes which did away with the most vital part of the pay-as-you-go rules that Democrats had re-established when they regained majority status in the House and Senate in 2007.
The import of this reversal — which effectively hides the deficit cost of their promised tax cuts — is stunning. It means that Republicans will again ignore the cost of tax cuts on future deficit spending, even as they begin their announced mission of giving corporations and businesses more tax cuts.
Hiding the cost of tax cuts
It’s all the more revealing that at the same time, they decided to keep the Democrats’ pay-as-go rules (commonly known as pay-go rules) only for any proposed increases in spending for domestic programs, such as Social Security inflation indexing, Medicare benefits, infrastructure investments, jobless benefits, Pell grants for poorer students who want to go to college, and extended aid to low-income working families.
They obviously do not consider tax cuts — known by budget analysts as tax expenditures — as spending, as well. But that’s ridiculous.