The first couple of days of a new Congress are an interesting time. It's a time with a great deal of tradition and ceremony. This is when new members introduce themselves to Washington. It's when parties taking power show their legislative priorities, or in this case their first chosen veto fight. In a detail usually worthy of little note, it's when the party in power sets the rules.
In the case of the 114th Congress, Republicans have chosen to tell us they intend to lie to the American people.
That isn't an empty claim. Look at the record established in our 35 year experiment with Trickle Down Economics. The decade 2000-2010 had lower economic growth than the 90's. The 90's had lower economic growth than the 80's. The 80's had lower economic growth than the 70s. The Conservative economic ideology of Trickle Down Economics, deregulation, and privatization has generated a steady slowing of the economy and an increasing tendency toward economic bubbles punctuated by increasingly disruptive recessions.
Republicans, however, intend to regime cleverly and deceptively named “Dynamic Scoring” on the Congressional Budget Office. Simply put, Dynamic Scoring means making an assumption that the economic policy of Republicans will increase economic growth...in spite of every bit of available real world evidence.
Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.
It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.
Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.
Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually magical scoring – which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.
Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed.
Ronald Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and ended up nearly doubling the national debt. His first budget director, David Stockman, later confessed he dealt with embarrassing questions about future deficits with “magic asterisks” in the budgets submitted to Congress. The Congressional Budget Office didn’t buy them.
George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton but then slashed taxes, mostly on the rich. The CBO found that the Bush tax cuts reduced revenues by $3 trillion.
http://robertreich.org/...
Congratulations, Americans. This is the government we've chosen...may God have mercy on our souls.