Beware of CutGo

Ezra Klein has a really good post, Republicans are not fiscally responsible about their proposed new "Cut/Go" rule.

"In the Bush years, Republicans didn't use paygo at all. That's why neither the tax cuts nor Medicare Part D even pretended to be paid for. But the Boehner Republicans just won an election by fretting over deficits. It would look sort of bad to repeal paygo on day one. So instead, they're neutering it. House Republicans are adding it with something called "cutgo." Under cutgo, tax cuts don't have to be paid for, and spending increases can't be offset by tax increases. The idea is that the only two things you can do are cut spending and cut taxes."

Now at first that doesn't sound so bad to me. I mean, I'm fine with raising some taxes to pay for things (I'm a liberal) but when he gives a real example, it's crazy...

"It's important to understand this in context of the potential compromises over the next few years. For instance: We need to reauthorize the Surface Transportation Act, which is our main vehicle for infrastructure funding. It's usually funded by the gas tax. Under cutgo, there's basically no way to do that: You can't offset a spending increase with a tax increase. It's not just nuts as a matter of budget arithmetic, but it's nuts in a way that has procedural teeth. That makes compromises that much harder."

digby points out, "This is very smart. They have realized that all this deficit hysteria inevitably leads to niggling thoughts that a wealthy person might have to kick in a little bit more to close the gap and they can't have that. So they are very systematically indoctrinating people with the idea that 'the government doesn't have a revenue problem it has a spending problem.' And once they seize upon a project like this, they don't just repeat the mantra like a flock of mindless parrots (which they do) they also institutionalize their ideas with rules and procedures to make it seem as if there's just no other way to think about it."