Of the various recent outrages contemplated by Congress, one its members will not hear about from the public is a gimmick to pay for a tax cut with another tax cut – in this case, flipping regular individual retirement accounts, open to everyone, into Roth IRAs, which were created to help the middle class save for retirement but would serve as a boon to the wealthy under a House proposal.

The switch would also cost taxpayers plenty over the long term; as Joseph Minarik of the Committee for Economic Development said recently, “Our grandchildren will look at what we hand them and they will curse us.”

Mr. Minarik’s group, along with The Concord Coalition, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, recently spoke against this plan, hoping their broad outlook on spending would reinforce the idea that this is a bad idea that would otherwise be overlooked, except by the accountants of the well-heeled. A lack of publicity may be what Congress had in mind.

By lifting the ceiling on the current $100,000 income cap on converting traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs, Congress would encourage those not now eligible to make the switch. That would bring in revenue to the treasury because traditional IRAs are taxable when the money is moved from those accounts – and that would offset the costs of extending a tax cut on dividends and capital gains. Senate rules require the offset beyond the five years, 2006-2010, covered by the budget legislation being debated.

But Roth IRAs are tax free when the money is removed, so in several years when those traditional IRA taxes would have come in, the money won’t be paid and the deficit will be worse. As the groups pointed out, the only holders of traditional IRAs who would transfer to a Roth IRA are those who would do so because it lowers their tax bills in the future. The scheme is bound to cost the Treasury.

And that, on its own, violates the Senate rule, which is in place to keep one generation from simply shoving its debts onto the next. Congress, of course, does this anyway but rarely is it so cynical as to open up a retirement program designed for the middle class to reward those with much higher incomes while knowing that its actions would hurt a future generation.

If this maneuver makes it to a full vote of both bodies, we urge Maine’s delegation to reject it.