Hiding the Salami
To be honest, David S. Broder is not the first person I would go to for information regarding the mendacity of the current regime. I was surprised, however, by his column in today's Washington Post. Apparently even the Dean is appalled by BushCo's hiding the true cost of the tax cuts for the wealthy.
Back when the late John Mitchell was attorney general in the Nixon administration, he advised reporters, "Watch what we do, not what we say."
That advice certainly applies to the Bush administration as well. The latest bit of evidence to come to my attention is what you might think of as the Case of the Disappearing Trillion.
The tip-off arrived last week in an e-mail from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It is a Washington research organization with a distinctly liberal point of view but a deserved reputation for accuracy in its figures.
In this case, the information the center cites was confirmed to me -- though with a very different interpretation -- by officials of the White House Office of Management and Budget. It involves the treatment in the budget of the Bush tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001 and 2003.
...This year, however, the budget the president submitted on Feb. 6 simply assumes that the tax cuts have been made permanent -- and thus includes them in the "baseline" for all future years.
The effect, according to the center's analysis, is that "legislation to make these tax cuts permanent will be scored as having no cost whatsoever."
...To fail ever to count the cost of the tax cuts in the years after the sunset dates . . . would represent one of the largest and most flagrant budget gimmicks in recent memory."
How large? The Congressional Budget Office scores the cost of making these tax cuts permanent at $1.6 trillion over the next decade. The administration's estimate is somewhat less -- $1.35 trillion.
...And those "inappropriate procedural roadblocks to extending them"? Translation: If you tell Congress the cost of making those tax cuts permanent, lawmakers might have second thoughts about doing it.
In fact, it turns out that Bush tried to get Congress to go along with this bookkeeping switch back in 2004, actually submitting legislation to authorize the change. The House refused to accept it. He put it back in his budget last year, with the same result. But this year he's back again, with more urgency, as he presses the case to make these tax cuts permanent. [Emphasis added]
Over a trillion dollars: that's the true cost of these tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans with money. In the meantime, as I pointed out here, the Republican Congress has cheerfully cut funding for such community based health programs as providing defibrillaters for rural areas and for public information to educate the public on Alzheimer's disease.
As if that weren't bad enough, the White House presented a budget which actively hides the salami of the actual numbers involved lest even the most conservative of Republicans feel some budgetary compunction as to raising the national debt that high. Oh, the numbers are there, but they are buried in collateral charts written in the arcane (and mostly unintelligible) language of the budget that only the economic wonks of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities were able to locate and translate.
Outrageous.
Back when the late John Mitchell was attorney general in the Nixon administration, he advised reporters, "Watch what we do, not what we say."
That advice certainly applies to the Bush administration as well. The latest bit of evidence to come to my attention is what you might think of as the Case of the Disappearing Trillion.
The tip-off arrived last week in an e-mail from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It is a Washington research organization with a distinctly liberal point of view but a deserved reputation for accuracy in its figures.
In this case, the information the center cites was confirmed to me -- though with a very different interpretation -- by officials of the White House Office of Management and Budget. It involves the treatment in the budget of the Bush tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001 and 2003.
...This year, however, the budget the president submitted on Feb. 6 simply assumes that the tax cuts have been made permanent -- and thus includes them in the "baseline" for all future years.
The effect, according to the center's analysis, is that "legislation to make these tax cuts permanent will be scored as having no cost whatsoever."
...To fail ever to count the cost of the tax cuts in the years after the sunset dates . . . would represent one of the largest and most flagrant budget gimmicks in recent memory."
How large? The Congressional Budget Office scores the cost of making these tax cuts permanent at $1.6 trillion over the next decade. The administration's estimate is somewhat less -- $1.35 trillion.
...And those "inappropriate procedural roadblocks to extending them"? Translation: If you tell Congress the cost of making those tax cuts permanent, lawmakers might have second thoughts about doing it.
In fact, it turns out that Bush tried to get Congress to go along with this bookkeeping switch back in 2004, actually submitting legislation to authorize the change. The House refused to accept it. He put it back in his budget last year, with the same result. But this year he's back again, with more urgency, as he presses the case to make these tax cuts permanent. [Emphasis added]
Over a trillion dollars: that's the true cost of these tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans with money. In the meantime, as I pointed out here, the Republican Congress has cheerfully cut funding for such community based health programs as providing defibrillaters for rural areas and for public information to educate the public on Alzheimer's disease.
As if that weren't bad enough, the White House presented a budget which actively hides the salami of the actual numbers involved lest even the most conservative of Republicans feel some budgetary compunction as to raising the national debt that high. Oh, the numbers are there, but they are buried in collateral charts written in the arcane (and mostly unintelligible) language of the budget that only the economic wonks of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities were able to locate and translate.
Outrageous.
posted by Diane at 5:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home