New Republican Math on Tax Cuts Doesn’t Equal Faster Growth
By Richard Rubin Jan 23, 2015 10:43 AM ET
Congressional Republicans who rewrote the rules on measuring the economic effects of legislation may be disappointed at some of the results.
They want to prove a point they’ve been making for decades -- that tax cuts spur economic growth and send enough new money into U.S. government coffers to partly pay for themselves. The new rules implement what’s known as dynamic scoring, breaking with a previous system that doesn’t calculate the impact of policy changes.
The problem is that many of the tax bills the Republicans have promoted as job creators -- including the research credit and breaks for small businesses -- barely register under the macroeconomic models used by the nonpartisan scorekeepers in Congress.
And some of the bills that would partly pay for themselves were opposed by many Republicans, such as the 2009 economic stimulus and the 2013 immigration plan backed by President Barack Obama.
Dynamic scoring is a hotly partisan, if wonky, issue. Republicans call the change a more realistic approach to budgeting. Democrats contend that Republicans are cooking the books in favor of lowering taxes.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-23/new-republican-math-on-tax-cuts-doesn-t-equal-faster-gdp-growth.html
