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How the GOP Could Make a Temporary Tax Cut Last for 20 Years


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2017 Jun 14, 3:22am   698 views  1 comment

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Republicans in Congress seem resigned to the prospect of having to force all of their legislative hopes and dreams for the 115th Congress through the narrow window of a pair of budget reconciliation provisions, one modifying the spending plan for Fiscal 2017 and one for 2018. So they are increasingly bringing up an idea that would allow them to do more within that constraint: expanding the “budget window” from 10 years to 20.

And on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin signaled that the Trump administration would be willing to work with congressional Republicans to make that happen.

The budget window is particularly important to legislation passed through the Senate’s reconciliation process, because under the body’s standing rules, no measure that is expected to increase the nation’s deficit outside the budget window can be included in a reconciliation bill.

It’s a plan that makes budget hawks a little bit nervous. While there are arguments for extending the window -- such as tax provisions that really are expected to have a positive effect on the deficit, but only after more than 10 years have gone by -- it’s not obvious that anything like that is really on the table right now.

“If the purpose of extending the budget window is because you have a tax plan or spending plan that’s effects really start to appear outside the 10 years, I’m very sympathetic to it,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“But if the purpose of extending the budget window is so that you can manipulate the Byrd rule and make it so that you have a ‘temporary’ tax cut or ‘temporary’ deficit spending that goes for 19 years before it expires, that’s just ridiculous. It’s a pure gimmick and there’s no basis for that except to circumvent important senate rules.”

#Economics #TaxCuts #GOP

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