The Washington Post Editorial Board is beginning, beginning mind-you, to think that maybe the GOP isn’t quite so serious about deficits after all:
Deficit financing is fine, it seems, when it comes to tax cuts. But that’s not all. Under the new rules, not only are tax cuts exempted from the pay-go concept, but the only way to pay for spending increases is with spending cuts elsewhere. No tax increases allowed – not even in the form of eliminating loopholes or cutting back on tax breaks. Of course, if you wanted to expand the loopholes, no problem. No need to pay for that.
Having made clear that no tax cuts need be paid for, the rules then take the extra step of specifying which deficit-busting tax cuts the new majority has in mind. They assume the continuation of all the Bush tax cuts; extension of the new version of the estate tax; and the creation of a big tax break to let “small businesses,” which can be expansively defined, take a deduction equal to 20 percent of their gross income.
Tax cuts for the wealthiest are fully protected. But tax help for those at the other end of the income spectrum? Forget it.
Shocking stuff. Can’t be right…Seems like I read something, somewhere about this, a while back…but that must have been all wrong.
At any rate, that $4T can easily be made up by trimming waste, fraud, and abuse inherent in the discretionary, non-defense budget…which totals around$1.4T for 2010. So, cutting four times that amount (over 10 years, solely to pay for new deficit spending to protect tax cuts for the richest 2%, and most definitely not current levels which would also require similarly scaled cuts in the very same time-frame) shouldn’t be any big deal. And, of course, Boehner’s ~$30M cuts in the House member’s own budgets gets us 0.75% of the way there already.
Lemkin 