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4 months ago
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As Senate Republicans barrel toward advancement in the coming days for President Trump's "big, beautiful bill," they are now fully behind a controversial budget maneuver to hide $3.8 trillion in red ink.
The GOP, in a 53-47 vote on Monday morning, turned back a Democratic effort to scrap an accounting approach known as a "current policy baseline" that takes the stance that extending current tax rates should be counted as having zero cost even if they are set to expire.
The vote came even after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened the day by charging that the change would lead the Senate down a "fact-free road" that could be felt for years to come and could even "erode, even destroy the Senate."
Republicans defend the practice as a more realistic approach, but what the accounting maneuver doesn't change is the underlying fact that the bill being debated this week is projected to add trillions to the national debt if it becomes law.
This bit of Washington arcana was front and center after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found over the weekend that the Senate-revised bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt if passed — $900 billion more than the previous House version.
Yet a recent Joint Committee on Taxation analysis of the tax component in the bill using this "current policy" approach and found a total cost of only about $442 billion in the coming decade.
After economists untangled the math and put things into the more comprehensive "current law" framework, the true impact on the national debt was shown to be nearly 10 times higher, at about $4.2 trillion.
The focus comes as GOP senators struggle to overcome internal disagreements on the price tag and other provisions.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and President Trump are continuing to push for votes on the package as soon as possible. A final vote in the Senate is likely on Monday or Tuesday.
As for the price tag debate, Republican leaders have tried with mixed success to end debate on that question by citing the "current policy" total and saying it is more realistic.
"Extending the Trump tax cuts prevents a $4 trillion tax increase — this is not a change in current tax policy or tax revenue," Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo said in a recent statement. "This score more accurately reflects reality by measuring the effects of tax policy changes relative to the status quo."
Yet the approach is being derided as a gimmick and upends decades of accounting practices.
