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GOP Rules Make It Easier To Cut Taxes, Harder to Help People [1]

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Date: 2023-01-28

For those keeping track at home, GOP lawmakers have apparently decided: *tax cuts always pay for themselves *actually it’s ok that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, deficits don’t matter when driven by tax cuts -- From a Twitter thread by Catherine Rampell, Washington Post columnist

Give the Republicans credit, when they’re determined to do something, they don’t hesitate to double down on a shameless con that’s as transparent as a freshly cleaned pane of glass.

We’re talking about the GOP’s hypocritical rhetoric about the deficit, which becomes a very serious issue to them when a Democrat is in the White House but a non-existent one when a Republican holds that office or if they just feel like screwing over the poor and middle class again to benefit the rich and corporations.

Their latest gamesmanship is found among the set of rules that Republicans in the House of Representatives have approved for the operation of that chamber. Let’s look at what they’re up to now.

In the past, if Congress wanted to increase spending in a mandatory program (one not funded through annual appropriations) or cut taxes – which left alone would add to the deficit – then it had to either cut somewhere else or raise taxes to balance the books.

Under the new rules, tax cuts do not need to be offset with any sort of savings elsewhere in the budget, so the loss of revenue will simply be added to our deficit. (Think of the $2 trillion the GOP’s 2017 tax cut is expected to add to the nation’s debt.)

But it’s different for spending programs. Now spending increases caused by expanding mandatory programs have to come from cutting other spending programs. They cannot be offset by tax increases.

This allows Republicans to scream their long-disproven phony concerns about budget deficits when it comes to spending money to help people in need, but not when they’re adding God knows how much to that same deficit with tax cuts.

From a practical standpoint, this opens the door for less help for the poor – such as children facing food insecurity, families struggling to make ends meet, maybe even seniors – and more money in the pockets of the rich and corporations.

Add to that another rule that requires a three-fifths vote of the House to increase taxes, but no such requirement for cutting them.

No wonder Joel Friedman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote that the new rules “would put up steep barriers to investments in critical national needs while paving the way for ever more tax cuts, inevitably tilted toward the wealthy and profitable corporations. This isn’t an agenda that will expand opportunity or support broadly shared economic growth.”

These rules “reflect an ideology that ignores reams of evidence showing that the tax cuts of recent decades haven’t meaningfully boosted economic growth. The large tax cuts have led to higher deficits and debt and lower investments in areas such as education, research, child care, climate, and transportation that would make our nation as a whole stronger,” he said.

And Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote: “They’ve rigged the system so that tax cuts will be much easier to pass, and tax rate increases harder to pass.

“On the other hand, investments in the poor and various other kinds of spending increases – on so-called mandatory programs, such as Medicare or food stamps – would be more challenging to get through.”

Rampell gave this example: “an expansion of food stamps can’t be paid by raising taxes on the rich – only by cutting, say Medicaid or disability benefits. So basically, any attempt to provide more support for poor or middle-income people is likely to come from other programs that help those same groups.”

Here are some other new rules:

*Reconciliation bills – which require a simple majority and can’t be filibustered in the Senate – can’t increase net mandatory spending, even if the program expansions were offset by revenue increases, but there’s no rule against a reconciliation bill that makes large tax cuts that increase the deficit.

*Bills that expand mandatory spending programs by more than $2.5 billion in any decade over the next 40 years are forbidden, but there’s no such prohibition for tax cuts no matter what they cost. (A reminder again that the 2017 GOP tax cut will cost $2 trillion over 10 years)

*When an amendment to a bill is adopted that cuts funding for a program, a subsequent amendment that would redirect the savings to other priorities in the bill isn’t allowed.

You can read Friedman’s piece here.

You can read Rampell’s column here.

***

Theoretically, these rules can be waived. Good luck with that. If Republicans have the hammer to pound the poor and middle class to help the rich, they’re not likely to give it up.

It’s bad enough what it could do to peoples’ everyday lives, what happens if we hit another financial crisis? Will the federal government be able to pass any kind of desperately needed aid packages, as it did to clean up the messes left by the previous two Republican administrations.

All this goes along with the GOP’s vision of “smaller government” – which in their minds is simply lower revenues from big tax cuts offset with cuts to things like the social safety net. Heck, they’ve even got Social Security and Medicare in their sights when the simple solution to at least funding Social Security would be to raise the income cap on taxes for that program, which now sits at $147,000.

In other words, in their minds it’s unconscionable to ask people making over $147,000 a year – more than many of us would ever dream of earning – to pay more so those not as fortunate won’t find themselves struggling during their so-called golden years.

We see you Republicans.

As Rampell says, budgets represent their creators’ priorities. With these rules, and in so many other ways, we can see the priorities of the GOP. How long will it be until enough people who vote can figure it out and make a difference?

Like comedian George Carlin said of the rich in relation to the rest of us: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”

***

Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.

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