Senate Republicans Reinvent Math So They Can Make America Super Poor

Lindsey Graham is drunk with power.

Everything sucks, so here’s a panda.

Here is a riddle for the discerning Wonkette reader: When is a tax cut not actually a tax cut? The answer, of course, is whenever the Republicans say so!

The specific Republican making the claim here, though he is doing it with the tacit permission of his caucus, is freeze-dried hairball Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. John McCain’s one-time remora has been working on a budget resolution that would allow the Senate Republicans to pass much of Donald Trump’s agenda in what the emperor has called one “big, beautiful” bill. Then they can all take the rest of the year off and go play some golf at one of Trump’s clubs while the rest of us stare at our 401k balances and weep into our canned soup.

Republicans would prefer that no one realize just how much all the tax cuts that are a centerpiece of the big, beautiful agenda will eventually cost. To get around that pesky problem, Graham announced that he is using an accounting trick known by its technical term, “making shit up.”

Here is the issue. Budget resolutions project government spending and revenue in a 10-year timeframe. That means this new resolution has to account for the fact that the 2017 Trump tax cuts are set to expire in 2027. This is a problem because the Republicans would like to not only extend those tax cuts, but tack on many, many more. Add it all together, and suddenly this bill might blow out the deficit and add anywhere from $5 to $11 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Normally, or at least in what used to count as “normally,” the reconciliation bill that will eventually emerge would get scored by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO would then report whether the bill costs what lawmakers said it would. In this case, the expensive bill would be much more likely to pass because the expiration of the Trump tax cuts would allow CBO to assume more revenue, so the bill would be more likely to be deficit neutral.

If the bill doesn’t pass the CBO’s scoring, the Senate parliamentarian can advise that the bill does not qualify for a reconciliation vote, which requires only a simple majority to pass. Republicans would have to make all sorts of spending cuts to the bill for it to get through. Or they would have to reduce the size of the tax cuts. That is definitely a nonstarter for them.

Alternately, Republicans can ignore the parliamentarian and bring the bill to the floor as is. Ignoring the parliamentarian is considered some sort of grotesque violation of the Senate’s precious norms, but we’re long past the point of anyone outside of the Democratic caucus caring about that.

So the Republicans came up with a neat trick: What if they just pretend the 2017 tax cuts don’t actually expire in 2027, but are simply the financial equivalent of How We Live Now? This is called using “current policy baseline,” and we’ll let Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post explain it in simple terms:

Here’s how: Republicans say that because some (expiring) tax cuts have been in place since 2017, extending them shouldn’t be recorded as costing anything, because they wouldn’t feel different.

As Rampell notes, this is like saying if the lease on your car expires, you should get a new one for free just because you got used to having a car. It’s utter horseshit. But then, so is everything else these weirdos have been doing.

Republicans have asked the parliamentarian to accept scoring the bill using their bullshit math. But then Lindsey Graham announced he wasn’t even bothering to wait for the parliamentarian to decide. Why bother waiting for a ruling to ignore? Might as well cut out all the drama now.

From The Hill:

Graham in a statement said he has authority under Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act “to determine baseline numbers for spending and revenue.”

“Under that authority, I have determined that current policy will be the budget baseline regarding taxation. This will allow the tax cuts to be permanent — which will tremendously boost the economy,” he said.

Translation: As Budget Chairman, I can just make up numbers on the spot. That $11 trillion we’re adding to the deficit? AKSHUALLY, we’re paying off $11 trillion of the national debt. Because I said so. Factories will boom and everyone will have a job. The economy will be booming. Also, fish are called birds now. Birds are called oomphyflagershtockers. Take it up with the voters if you don’t like it.

This is the sort of math that Donald Trump has loved for his entire business career, which also helps explain all the bankruptcies. And the stiffed vendors. And the hundreds of lawsuits. Shoot, we’re pretty sure we remember Trump hiding spending through some shady accounting trips resulted in him being convicted of three dozen felonies.

The GOP’s little sleight of hand here isn’t really any better. Politicians hiding the cost of something is a time-honored tradition. No wonder Trump has managed to bring Republicans to heel. Now the GOP doesn’t feel it even needs to bother with the optics.

As Philip Marlowe once famously said, the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter. And the yammer coming from Trump and his party is pretty damn gaudy.

[Washington Post / The Hill]

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