Top Congressional Republicans want to force the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to employ the use of a specific mathematical formula that will manipulate the results of tax cuts, making them appear less harmful, Talking Points Memo reported.
Conservative Republicans have favored the use of “dynamic scoring,” as it’s known, since the 1970s. Critics have railed against dynamic scoring, calling it the number equivalent to “fairy dust” because it almost magically makes tax cuts look less harmful than they really are.
“In practice, dynamic scoring is just another way for Republicans to enact tax cuts and block tax increases, wrote Bruce Bartlett, an economist, in The New York Times last year. “It’s not about honest revenue-estimating; it’s about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.”
Dynamic scoring will force the CBO to “make dubious assumptions about the future economy, and extrapolate those assumptions into job-creating effects as a result of tax cuts.”
House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) is looking to chair the Ways & Means Committee next year and is the one who recommended that the CBO use dynamic scoring. Others from the conservative camp like Mitch McConnell and pens from the National Review and Wall Street Journal supported dynamic scoring.
While conservatives want to play fast and loose with important documents and tax calculations, economic experts, like Bartlett, also indicate the recklessness of dynamic scoring.
“We think it is a mistake to count those chickens before they hatch and basically incorporate those into the official scoring of the bill,” said Loren Adler with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Macroeconomic modeling is highly uncertain . . . especially if you’re talking about the dynamic of tax cuts.”
Ryan’s budgetary policy reflects that of George W. Bush. He wants to increase military spending and cut taxes for the rich. Democrats say that using dynamic scoring will force “savage cuts” to Pell Grants, Head Start, and Medicaid.
With the Republicans comes irresponsible fiscal policy which causes poverty, cuts in necessary programs, and income inequality.
