Top Dem: Republicans ‘rigging the rules’ for next budget fight

A leading House Democrat on Wednesday accused congressional Republicans of “rigging the rules against working families” by implementing budget projections that look more favorably at tax cuts.

{mosads}Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, insisted Republicans were seeking to shield the true costs of a tax-cutting agenda that he says “has a long and proven record of failure.”

House Republicans said late Tuesday they would put into place new budget rules, commonly known as dynamic scoring, that project that cutting taxes helps to spur economic growth.

“Imposing ‘dynamic scoring’ on Congress’ scorekeepers isn’t just an accounting issue. It favors windfall tax breaks to the very wealthy and big corporations who can hire high-priced, well-funded lobbyists,” Van Hollen said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Instead of working with Democrats to grow the middle class, Republicans are trying to cook the books and hoping Americans won’t notice. Make no mistake: ‘dynamic scoring’ is little more than an attempt to open the door to political manipulation of the budget process and impose debunked trickle-down theories.”

Republicans have long been fans of dynamic scoring, saying it’s more accurate than the current “static” scores employed by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Under the rules expected for the new Congress, the House would require dynamic scores for measures whose cost equals at least 0.25 percent of gross domestic product, or roughly $43 billion for 2014. The rules wouldn’t apply to appropriations bills.

The House passed three such bills over the last two years, only one of which — a one-year extension of dozens of expired tax breaks just signed by President Obama — became law.

Democrats like Van Hollen have long said that dynamic scores are imprecise, and have openly worried that Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will use the more generous scores to make it easier to overhaul the tax code.

Congressional scorekeepers found that the tax reform draft this year from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) would raise between $50 billion and $700 billion in new revenue over a decade. But Camp did not use that revenue to further lower rates, and his draft failed to gain traction among Republicans and Democrats alike.

Ryan’s House Budget website has already started pushing back on that criticism, noting that “uncertainty is inherent in the process of estimating the future fiscal and economic impact of proposed legislation.”

But Republicans also say the current static scores have those same issues, and that there’s no reason for the CBO and the JCT not to offer their best macroeconomic analysis.

“As noted budget expert Yogi Berra once said, ‘It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,’ ” the Budget Committee Republicans said.