U.S. Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, said a bill considered by the House of Representatives is designed to hide the real economic effects and impact of extending the Bush-era tax cuts.
The "Pro-Growth Budgeting Act," would change the way the non-partisan Congressional Budgeting Office (CBO) analyzes the fiscal and ecnomic impacts of measures before Congress.
While in the past the CBO has estimated that extending the Bush-era tax cuts would raise the federal deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, going forward the "Pro-Growth Budgeting Act," an analysis made by the CBO would show no real harm done by extending those cuts, Scott said.
"Today the House considered legislation that will not create any jobs or reduce the budget deficit but will instead force the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to use accounting gimmicks to cover up the true cost of extending the Bush-era tax cuts," Scott said. "CBO has estimated that extending the Bush-era tax cuts will add $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that a long term extension will reduce economic growth by up to 1.6 percent by 2020. H.R. 3582 would require CBO to adopt a baseline that would already include the cost of permanently extending the Bush-era tax cuts, and thus, any analysis of the economic impact of any legislative proposal would have to be relative to this new baseline. Under this scheme, if the House considered a long term extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, an economic analysis of such a proposal would show no adverse economic or fiscal impact. Requiring CBO to base projections on unproven economic theories and philosophy, instead of traditional arithmetic, will suggest that unaffordable tax cuts have no adverse effect on the budget and will only make our deficit and economic situation much worse than it is now."
Unless Spending is controlled or stopped, the solution is neither extending the "Bush-era tax cuts" or increasing taxes to the wealthy. The more money our government recieves the less motivated it is to stop Spending. There is not enough wealth in this country or the world to keep our government in the "lifestyle" it has become accustomed to or to redistribute the wealth for any length of time--the government will run out of everyone's money.
Posted by: Gloria Di Stefano | Friday, February 03, 2012 at 05:14 PM
Excellent read, I just passed this onto a colleague who was doing a little research on this topic....
Posted by: Unitech New Residential Project Unihomes 3 | Friday, February 03, 2012 at 04:29 AM