03.05.25

Here's What They're Saying: Bipartisan Policymakers & Budget Policy Analysts Criticize Republicans’ “Magic Math” That Will Explode the Deficit

Current Policy Baseline is a “Budget Gimmick”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As Senate and House Republicans debate the best way to strip hard-working Americans of essential services and explode the deficit with a second round of Trump tax giveaways to the wealthy, bipartisan budget policy experts are sounding off on a budget gimmick to hide the high cost of their tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations. The tactic, known as the “current policy baseline,” is misleading and has never been used before when considering legislation, much less a budget reconciliation bill with additional accompanying rules. Nevertheless, Congressional Republicans are currently championing this end-run around both law and precedent as a way to extend their disastrous tax cuts for billionaires.

“What Republicans are attempting to do is upend decades of precedent and trample on the laws that govern how Congress budgets. Congressional Republicans need to realize that ‘magic math’ does not exist and tax cuts cost money, even if Republicans want to pretend that they don’t. Refusing to measure something doesn’t mean it goes away,” said Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley.

Sen. Mike Crapo, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Jason Smith, Chair of the House and Ways Means Committee, have publicly floated using a current policy baseline, instead of the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) standard current law baseline, for the upcoming Republican reconciliation bill. Crapo, Smith, and other Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for Congressional budget enforcers to ignore law and precedent so their costly proposals, like a $4.6 trillion extension of the Trump tax cuts, appear to be much less costly. The Republicans’ goals are twofold: to avoid the political blowback for passing such deficit-raising tax cuts for the wealthy and to circumvent reconciliation rules.

Policymakers and policy experts on both sides of the aisle agree: this strategy is wrong and will balloon our national debt regardless of the measuring stick used.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee:

Billionaire math: “You sign your yearlong lease and pay your rent each month for your apartment. When your landlord comes back at the end of the lease and says, ‘How about signing for another year?’ You say, ‘Happy to sign. It won’t cost anything since this is an extension, right?’ Well, of course not.” [LINK]

U.S. Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ), Chair of the Joint Economic Committee:

 “Anyone that says current policy baseline is engaging in intellectual and economic fraud, because it’s intellectually lazy. My basic mission in life is just to try to create some honest math.” [LINK]

U.S. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX):

“This is fairy dust, and they’re full of crap. And I’m gonna call them out on it.” [LINK]

Andrew Lautz, Associate Director for Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Program:

“One baseline can show a bill to cost $4.5 trillion on paper and another $0, but—compared to the letter of the law—extending expiring TCJA provisions without offsets will contribute $4.5 trillion to deficits.” [LINK] [THREAD]

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB):

“Assuming [current policy baseline] is allowed under budget rules, this would represent a massive budget gimmick that would justify and allow trillions of dollars of new borrowing.” [LINK] [THREAD]

Marc Goldwein, Senior Vice President and Senior Policy Director, CRFB:

“This would be the biggest and maybe most economically costly gimmick in American history. And depending on how they do it, [Republicans] could ultimately undermine the entire filibuster…. Or at least the budget process.” [LINK]

Bobby Kogan, Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy and Brendan Duke, Senior Director for Economic Policy, Center for American Progress:

“What Sen. Crapo is asking for is special treatment that no part of the budget has ever received in official budget enforcement.” [LINK]

Jessica Riedl, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former Chief Economist for former Senator Rob Portman (R-OH):

“Congress can play whatever budget games it wants to evade its budget rules. But the deficit still skyrockets, the interest costs still bury taxpayers, and the bond market still eventually cries uncle. The laws of economics and math cannot be overruled in reconciliation.” [LINK]

Alex Brill, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute:

An advocate of current policy is “intentionally misremembering how federal budget estimates work, or ...simply trying to prime lawmakers to ignore five decades of budgetary conventions and build support for larger future deficits?” [LINK]

Romina Boccia, Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy, Cato Institute:

“Now the Senate is attempting to rewrite the budget resolution using an accounting gimmick to pretend extending the 2017 tax cuts won’t increase the deficit. Their tactic: switching to a ‘current policy baseline.’” [LINK]

George Callas, Executive Vice President of Public Finance at Arnold Ventures:

“They’re not advocates of using a current policy baseline. They're advocates of using a current law baseline on the front end to reduce the original cost of enactment and then current policy baseline on the back end to eliminate the cost of extension.” [LINK]

Andrew Moylan, Vice President of Public Finance at Arnold Ventures:

“[Current policy] is ‘telling yourself sweet little lies about how much deficit impact you’re going to have. It’s like telling your bathroom scale that certain calories don’t count.’” [LINK]

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