Republicans Don’t Care About the Deficit

The incoming Republican majority has proposed “strict” new rules for the U.S. House of Representatives:

On the spending front, Republicans plan to implement a series of rules called CUT/GO — a conservative answer to the PAY/GO rules instituted by Democrats. Under CUT/GO, increases in mandatory spending would have to be offset by spending cuts in other programs.

Under CUT/GO, offsets could not be achieved by raising taxes, according to the summary.

Jonathan Chait breaks it down:

The old rules, created under the highly successful 1990 deficit reduction deal between George Bush and (mostly) Democrats in Congress, any new entitlement spending or tax cuts had to be offset with entitlement cuts or higher taxes.

[T]he GOP new rules mean that new tax cuts do not require any offsets at all. Which is to say, they are replacing a rule that prevented policies that add to the deficit with a rule that enables policies that add to the deficit. They may call that “strict,” but it is the opposite.