Swiss-Cheese-GO: When the Exceptions Swallow the Rule

It was to be a new era of fiscal responsibility. In 2006, Nancy Pelosi promised that “the first thing” Democrats would do when they were in control was to reimpose Paygo rules that “Republicans had let lapse.” That didn’t quite happen. By 2008 those rules had “lapsed” twelve times for a total of $400 billion in new deficit spending. Ok, well that didn’t stick, but on the campaign trail Barack Obama promised to “reinstate pay-as-you-go budget rules, so that new spending or tax cuts are paid for by spending cuts or revenue elsewhere.” He subsequently engaged in a trillion dollar spending binge that painted the nation’s ledger red with deficit spending. Well, that was a slip up, but now he’s was super serious when he said in his weekly internet address,

“Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else. . .  After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do.”

At least he got the first part right. Polls show that Americans, especially Millennials, are tired of the federal government’s big spending ways. A February poll by Rasmussen finds that among voters 18-29,

• 74% are either very or somewhat concerned by the federal deficit
• 68% believe that cutting the deficit would be better for the economy than the Keynesian approach of increasing deficit spending
• 64% believe that increasing the deficit will hurt the economy
• 85% thinkthat the government fails to spend taxpayer money wisely and carefully
• 87% blame politicians unwillingness to reduce government spending as the cause of the federal deficit

Our fiscally frugal generation has been let down again. Far from being responsible, Congressional Democrats have found creative ways to work around the spirit of the Paygo law. For instance, the law exempts more than 50 federal programs from its reach – including the biggest ticket items like Social Security, the Medicare doc fix, and the alternative minimum tax patch. These tidy little exceptions are worth some $2.5 trillion; money that the government is not required to offset under Paygo.

The biggest farce comes in the form of an “emergency” exception. Patricia Murphy of Politics Daily explains,

“[A]lready, the Senate has issued itself a waiver from the provisions on three of the four spending bills it has considered by declaring several bills to be emergency spending, including a $15-billion jobs bill, a $10-billion measure for unemployment benefits and $100 billion package of tax extenders.”

If everything is the exception is there really a rule? We won’t (though we could) argue that there isn’t a unemployment emergency that requires government action. But, it does not follow that the government can’t make up for that spending elsewhere. As Olsson Frank Weeda of the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform makes clear,

“You can find there are so many places in discretionary spending that have been increased tremendously over the last two, three, four years that can be cut.”

On Tuesday Tom Coburn attempted to rein in the clear abuse of the Paygo law by introducing an amendment requiring the Senate to post the full cost of Paygo violation online for the public.  Of course the Senate passed it unanimously. To vote no would have been to uncover the swiss-cheese fiscal responsibility of Paygo. Nevertheless, Coburn is less than optimistic about his amendment’s chances to create lasting change to Democrats’ free spending ways. In an emailed statement he says,

“Today, minutes after the Senate accepted my amendment to post its violations of PAYGO online, Senators signaled their intent to remove this amendment from the bill before it goes to the President.  Taxpayers are tired of this cat and mouse game on spending and will hold Senators accountable if they want to be for transparency in words but not action.”

Unfortunately, Obama and the Democrats in Congress have perfected this game of cat and mouse. They say all the right things in public yet continue to drown our generation in red ink. Paygo is a good idea to get us back on track. There should be no exceptions.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

Read more: www.collegerepublicans.org