Budget Deal Moving Ahead, Despite Outrage on the Right
The bipartisan deal to suspend the debt ceiling and increase federal spending over the next two years will get a vote in the House on Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said late Tuesday. Leaders in both parties have expressed confidence that the bill will pass before lawmakers leave town for their August recess.
"We're gonna pass it," Hoyer told reporters. "I think we'll get a good number [of votes]. I don't know if it's gonna be huge, but we're gonna pass it."
President Trump announced that he backs the deal, removing one possible hurdle for the bill. “Budget Deal gives great victories to our Military and Vets, keeps out Democrat poison pill riders. Republicans and Democrats in Congress need to act ASAP and support this deal,” he tweeted Tuesday evening.
Despite widespread agreement that the bill will pass, however, not everyone is on board.
Grumbles from the left: Some progressive Democrats have been critical of the deal, portraying it as too easy on Republicans. Worried that the agreement could set up a budget crisis in 2021, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said he was “concerned that it was a two-year deal. Why not a one year deal?... It seems like it’s basically handcuffing the next president.” Other liberals, noting that Democratic leaders have agreed to avoid “poison pill” riders on controversial issues such as abortion and funding for the border wall in the funding bills that must pass this fall, lamented their loss of leverage in those negotiations.
Outrage on the right: Resistance to the deal was more pronounced on the right, with the hardline House Freedom Caucus announcing Tuesday that it would not support the bill due to concerns about the growing national debt. “Our country is undeniably headed down a path of fiscal insolvency and rapidly approaching $23 trillion in debt. … All sides should go back to the drawing board and work around the clock, canceling recess if necessary, on a responsible budget agreement that serves American taxpayers better—not a $323 billion spending frenzy with no serious offsets,” the 31-member group said in a statement.
The deficit hawks at the Committee for Responsible Federal published “Five Reasons to Oppose the Budget Deal,” which include its purported $1.7 trillion cost over 10 years. CRFB noted that the agreement would increase discretionary spending by 21 percent during President Trump’s first term, pushing such spending to near-record levels.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was more colorful in his criticism, saying, “You don’t have to be Euclid to understand the math here. We’re like Thelma and Louise in that car headed toward the cliff.” Nevertheless, Kennedy said he would consider supporting the deal.
Is the deficit hawk dead? The budget deal represents “the culmination of years of slipping fiscal discipline in Washington,” said Robert Costa and Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post, and it highlights the declining influence of fiscal conservatives in the capital, at least as far as policy is concerned. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said the Republican Party’s credibility on fiscal restraint is “long gone.”
Although it may be too early to declare the fiscal hawk extinct – plenty of critics say the bird will return as soon as there’s a Democratic president – it certainly seems to be in ill health. As the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato said Wednesday: “A battered bird has been named to the list of endangered species. The ‘deficit hawk’ is on the road to extinction. Rarely spotted around Washington, D.C., the deficit hawk’s last remaining habitat is found in some state capitals.”
Some Republicans said that fiscal conservatism was never really a core Republican value, dating back to President Reagan’s tax-cut-and-spend policies, and that Paul Ryan’s emphasis on fiscal issues was an aberration. “It was never the party of Paul Ryan,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the Post. “He’s a brilliant guy, but he filled a policy gap. The reality here is that Republicans were never going to get spending cuts with Speaker Pelosi running the House, and they didn’t want an economic meltdown or shutdown this summer.”
Is the whole debate missing the point? William Gale of the Brookings Institution, who served on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, said he wasn’t sure why the budget deal was producing so much hostility, since it basically maintains the status quo and – more importantly – is focused solely on discretionary spending. “There *is* a long-term budget issue,” Gale tweeted Tuesday, “but cutting [discretionary spending] is not the way to go.”
Instead, Gale says that any serious fiscal plan must focus on the mandatory side of the ledger, where the rapidly increasing costs of health care and retirement are straining against revenues reduced by repeated rounds of tax cuts. Gale recommends a combination of entitlement reductions and revenue increases – a standard mix of policy options that faces an uncertain future, with well-entrenched interest groups standing opposed to movement in either direction.
Tweet of the Day: Revenues or Spending?
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee and one of the authors of the 2017 Republican tax overhaul, told The Washington Post’s Heather Long Tuesday that the budget deficit is driven by excess spending, not a shortfall in revenues in the wake of the tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal’s Kate Davidson provided some inconvenient facts for Brady’s claim in a tweet, pointing out that government revenues as a share of GDP have fallen significantly since 2015, while spending has remained more or less constant.
Chart of the Day: The Decline in IRS Audits
Reviewing the recent annual report on tax statistics from the IRS, Robert Weinberger of the Tax Policy Center says it “tells a story of shrinking staff, fewer audits, and less customer service.” The agency had 22% fewer personnel in 2018 than it did in 2010, and its enforcement budget has fallen by nearly $1 billion, Weinberger writes. One obvious effect of the budget cuts has been a sharp reduction in the number of audits the agency has performed annually, which you can see in the chart below.
Number of the Day: $102 Million
President Trump’s golf playing has cost taxpayers $102 million in extra travel and security expenses, according to an analysis by the left-leaning HuffPost news site.
“The $102 million total to date spent on Trump’s presidential golfing represents 255 times the annual presidential salary he volunteered not to take. It is more than three times the cost of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that Trump continually complains about. It would fund for six years the Special Olympics program that Trump’s proposed budget had originally cut to save money,” HuffPost’s S.V. Date writes.
Date says the White House did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Americans See Tax-Paying as a Duty
The IRS may not be conducting audits like it used to, but according to the agency’s Data Book for 2018, most Americans still believe it’s not acceptable to cheat on your taxes. About 67% of respondents to an IRS opinion survey “completely agree” that it’s a civic duty to pay “a fair share of taxes,” and another 26% “mostly agree,” bringing the total in agreement to over 90%. Accounting Today says that attitude has been pretty consistent over the last decade.
Coming Soon: Deductible Relief Day!
You may be familiar with the concept of Tax Freedom Day – the date on which you have earned enough to pay all of your taxes for the year. Focusing on a different kind of financial burden, analysts at the Kaiser Family Foundation have created Deductible Relief Day – the date on which people in employer-sponsored insurance plans have spent enough on health care to meet the average annual deductible.
Average deductibles have more than tripled over the last decade, forcing people to spend more out of pocket each year. As a result, Deductible Relief Day is “getting later and later in the year,” Kaiser’s Larry Levitt said in a tweet Thursday.
