Gimmicks to the supercommittee’s rescue

By Norman Leahy | Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 | Politics

Because cutting government spending is hard, Congress punted the task to an ill-named “supercommittee.” But as this committee was designed to fail in that task, the worthies have defaulted to the tried-and-true: gimmicks. From the Wall Street Journal:

Some tools are familiar to old Washington hands, such as massaging budget assumptions and painting rosy economic scenarios. Others include taking credit for “saving” money on wars that are ending and putting off until next year what lawmakers don’t want to deal with now.

It’s the kind of “massaging” that, in the real world, might get you arrested:

Both Democrats and Republicans are open to saying they are “saving” as much as $600 billion because of the impending end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans see that as a way to fend off further defense cuts; Democrats have proposed using those paper savings to offset the cost of job-creation initiatives such as an extension of unemployment benefits.

Other paper savings may be found by adjusting the bill’s “baseline,” the standard against which its impact on the deficit is measured.

The Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper, has traditionally measured savings against the cost of continuing policies under current law. Such an approach assumes Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of the year, meaning extending them would add $3.7 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

Both Democrats and Republicans have indicated willingness to change the baseline to assume the Bush tax rates are extended, with no impact on the deficit.

Ah, the baseline budget. It really is the biggest budget gimmick of all:

To recap: the supercommittee may resort to sleight-of-hand to reach a deal. And even if it did really decide to trim spending, federal outlays would still rise.

Maybe Mr. Perry doesn’t go far enough with his cut congressional pay and send them home proposal.

Perhaps a better idea would be to lock them up.

Tags: baseline budgeting budget gimmicks federal spending supercommittee