Here's a topic that bridges this week's look at bill making and next week's look at the budgeting. Bruce Bartlett analyzes a bill passed by the House Feb 3 which will impact the ability of the Congressional Budgetary Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to accurately estimate the revenues as well as the impact that tax cuts have on the economy. Bartlett is critical of the effort and is concerned that it inserts a political element into what ought to be a neutral, objective process.
Republicans don’t really care about accurate revenue estimates; they just want them to show that tax cuts pay for themselves, so they can pass more of them without constraint. As my fellow Economix contributor Simon Johnson has noted, the corruption of the agencies that produce budget data is a crucial cause of Europe’s debt crisis.
