Senate Republicans Contemplate Budget Fraud
Passing Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill," will require lying to America.
Republicans in the Senate may have encountered in insurmountable obstacle to giving President Trump his “Big, Beautiful Bill” to extend the expiring 2017 tax cuts and increase spending for border security and defense while at the same time not dramatically increasing the national debt: Obstacle is economics.
Ever hear the phrase, “Numbers don’t lie?” Unfortunately, they can if Republican Senate leadership gets their way. They are asking Senate Parlimentarian to allow the extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts without assuming any cost associated with making them permanent.
Budgeteers estimate extension of the Trump Tax cuts costs $4.5 trillion or more over 10 years. A Senate Budget Resolution increasing the national debt by that amount is not likely to pass the Senate.
The dishonest solution is to get the Senate Parlimentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, to lie. She would rule it costs nothing to extend the tax cuts by using what is called “a current policy baseline.” I call it budget fraud.
In 2017, when the tax cuts were enacted, they were “sunsetted” in 2025 in order to reduce their costs. Had the tax cuts been permanent, the cost of that legislation would have been prohibitive.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) will call the lie “budget accounting” or “budget scoring,” but anyone who has worked on Congressional budget legislation knows that “budget scoring” is vulnerable to manipulation.
Democrats do it too.
It would be convenient if budget fraud were the exclusive domain of Republicans. It’s not. Both Democrats and Republicans do it, which doesn’t make it right.
An example of Democrats’ enaging in what I call budget fraud is the bill that enacted ObamaCare. In order to meet the budget requirements for the bill, the legislation included “reform” of the federal student loan programs consisting of having the federal government rather than banks and non-profit lenders make student loans. Savings of $8.7 billionwere “scored” for the reform, enough to put ObamaCare over the top.
What is known as the Federal Direct Student Loan Program was subsequently recognized as a disaster. Loan forigveiness programs and defaults resulted in the loans not being repaid. President Biden exacerbated the problem by forgiving billions in student loans.
What was supposed to be multi-billion savings proved to be costs of hundreds of billions of federal dollars.
Trump and MAGA don’t care about the national debt.
Senate Repubicans now plan to engage in more budget fraud. Thus far, a handful of Senators are crying foul. Will Trump manage to bully them into line?
Looking for evidence that the Trump agenda is built on huge federal deficits? Look no further than the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”