Nov. 8—GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson mocked the Congressional Budget Office when it estimated his plan to cut IRS funding as part of the Israeli aid bill would increase the federal deficit by $26 billion over the next 10 years.
Johnson proposed spending $14.3 billion to provide Israel with needed aid in its fight against Hamas. He excluded aid to Ukraine, which has bipartisan support, but it also called for cutting $14.3 billion from the IRS budget.
“Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,” Johnson said last week.
For many years, economists and others have agreed with the premise that a $1 cut to the IRS increases the deficit by $2. The IRS generally brings in $2 for every $1 it spends.
Sounds like an efficient operation to us.
The CBO has a long history of credibility and economists overwhelmingly agree it is nonpartisan and nonbiased in its economic calculations. That’s why it continues to have support from House and Senate budget committee, no matter which party is in charge.
If Johnson’s first fight is with the CBO, he’s chosen a rock solid opponent.
We hope this is not another attempt to delegitimize a well-functioning, critical part of U.S. government and U.S. democracy. It sounds eerily familiar to plans ex-President Donald Trump and his followers are making to dismantle objective and professional government departments and turn them political if he wins the election.
Of course, Johnson has long been a supporter of Trump. He was a significant figure in Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
According to the Brookings Institution, the CBO has supplanted the executive Office of Management and Budget “as the authoritative source of information on the economy and the budget in the eyes of Congress, the press, and the public.”
Moreover, the director of the CBO is jointly selected by the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate — again, no matter which party they represent.
A March 2017 survey of leading economists shows a consensus behind the notion that “adjusting for legal restrictions on what the CBO can assume about future legislation and events, the CBO has historically issued credible forecasts of the effects of both Democratic and Republican legislative proposals.”
So Johnson may believe cutting the IRS won’t restrict the flow of money coming in, but the facts don’t back that up. We shouldn’t be delegitimizing institution like the Congressional Budget Office, which has for decades served taxpayers with objective information on policies regardless of party.