Hint to Obama: Call healthcare reform a jobs bill, circumvent paygo rules
The Senate 鈥渏obs bill鈥� passed on Wednesday contains nearly $60 billion in (obviously-jobs-related) extended unemployment benefits. (Here is .) But it also includes $34 billion in extended tax cuts, none of which are brand new (they鈥檙e 鈥渆xpiring鈥� provisions, after all) nor uniquely designed to get us out of this particular recession. These are expiring tax provisions that regularly expire and regularly get extended. (Here is the where you can see line by line details on the revenue provisions.)
So the extension of the expiring tax provisions is something that would occur, repeatedly, even without the vehicle of a 鈥渏obs bill.鈥� There really is hardly ever a tax cut that is truly 鈥渢emporary鈥� in practice, no matter how it is written into law. What the label of 鈥渏obs bill鈥� allows is the exemption of these (effectively permanent鈥搃n good times and in bad) tax cuts from PAYGO rules, which would otherwise require that the cost of the tax cuts be offset. The CBO estimate shows (on page 2) that out of the package鈥檚 around $100 billion in cost over ten years, $95 billion is considered PAYGO-exempt because of the 鈥渆mergency鈥� designation.
It makes me wonder why politicians don鈥檛 try to label any policy they鈥檙e trying to pass lately, especially any policy they don鈥檛 want to have to pay for, as a 鈥渏obs bill.鈥� The title of this tax extenders bill that happens to include the extension of unemployment benefits is the 鈥淎merican Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010.鈥� As the Administration and Congress struggle to reach agreement on the health reform bill, particularly over the policies designed to keep it (at least slightly) deficit-reducing, I wonder if it won鈥檛 be long before we hear the argument that health reform鈥揳nd the expansion of health entitlements and the deficit鈥搃s needed to create jobs even more than it鈥檚 needed to control costs. When will the health reform bill get relabeled as a 鈥渏obs bill鈥�?
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