Trillion-Dollar Gimmick
Extending Bush’s Tax Cuts Through Sleight of Hand
By David S. Broder

Back when the late John Mitchell was attorney general in the Nixon administration, he advised reporters, “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

That advice certainly applies to the Bush administration as well. The latest bit of evidence to come to my attention is what you might think of as the Case of the Disappearing Trillion. …

The Congressional Budget Office scores the cost of making these tax cuts permanent at $1.6 trillion over the next decade. The administration’s estimate is somewhat less — $1.35 trillion.

But, the folks at the OMB told me, it’s wrong to claim that they are hiding that cost. They told me to get out my copy of the budget, and they told me right where to look. And sure enough on Column 8, Line 11 of Table S-7 on Page 324 of the green-bordered book, I found the very figure they had cited — $1.35 trillion.

The heading on the chart of Effects of Proposals on Receipts reads: “Make Permanent Certain Tax Cuts Enacted in 2001 and 2003 (assumed in the baseline).” Those last four words conceal more than a trillion dollars worth of lost revenue. …

In fact, it turns out that Bush tried to get Congress to go along with this bookkeeping switch back in 2004, actually submitting legislation to authorize the change. The House refused to accept it. He put it back in his budget last year, with the same result. But this year he’s back again, with more urgency, as he presses the case to make these tax cuts permanent.