Sticking with Pay-Go

The Senate today is expected to try again to assemble a budget resolution – the blue print for its 2005 budget – that a majority can agree on. The sticking point is fiscal responsibility: Some Republicans and all Democrats want additional tax cuts along with new entitlement spending paid for unless a three-fifths majority votes otherwise. GOP leadership wants those tax cuts to slide through by simple majority.

This pay-as-you-go provision presents a dilemma for Senate leadership. Republicans, the traditional anti-deficit party, already has established record-setting deficits in the last couple of years. Further tax cuts would add billions to the problem. Senate GOP leaders have made much of the fact that Senate Democratic leadership was so poor a couple of years ago that it was unable to find agreement on a resolution. They were right, but now face the same problem. However, they would have a hard time paying for all the tax cuts they want.

There are good reasons for passing a resolution – it would include a means for raising the debt ceiling without allowing endless add-ons, for instance; it would set appropriate spending caps along the way – but the absence of a resolution is preferable to one that builds in large deficits for years to come. Fortunately, Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe have insisted on a meaningful “pay-go” rule and turned down short-term patches. Their votes, in a closely divided Senate, are crucial and their consistent stand on this issue is appreciated.

Some tax cuts are expected to pass by more than three-fifths so should no longer be a part of the debate. The marriage-tax penalty, the expanded 10 percent bottom bracket for income tax, the larger child tax credit would win passage with or without the protection of the budget resolution. But measures such as the extension of the bonus depreciation for businesses – a means of economic stimulus that the White House did not request again but Congress has on its agenda – likely would not. Neither would the estate tax acceleration. The desire to implement these may be the unspoken reason that the unnecessary budget protections have been offered for the cost of the three popular cuts. Sen. Collins observed yesterday, “That suggests to me that they are going to be used as vehicles for other cuts.”

The lack of a resolution would force Congress to use last year’s budget figures, $814 billion for 2005, which means delaying work on appropriations and finding other bills – the Iraq emergency supplemental spending has been mentioned often – to carry new spending. Neither House nor Senate leadership should want this, and a compromise with those calling for fiscal restraint could end this deadlock. Instead of approving pay-go for five years, three might be sufficient on the five-year budget, as long as there were no exemptions to pay-go. What certainly shouldn’t be acceptable to Maine’s senators is a one-year budget and one year of pay-go, which simply sets up the budget for all manner of mischief next year.

The only tax provisions Congress must address this year are the three benefiting the middle class and the alternative-minimum tax, none of which will be held up. If leadership wants a budget resolution, it has enough votes for a three-year pay-go compromise. Otherwise, Maine’s senators are better off with the stand they have taken.