Dynamic Scoring

MaxSpeaks actually provides a partial defense of the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform in regards the attacks from the right. In addition to a cool illustration of the wingnuts, Max writes:

They are also crying because the Commission did not use “dynamic scoring.” This would have allowed the Commission to present revenue-losing/deficit-increasing proposals under the guise of fiscal responsibility.

Tom DeLay has taken to imitating Ross Perot:

In case you were wondering what that giant “whoosh” emanating from Washington was, it was the sound of the people on the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform swinging and missing at the easy underhand toss that George W. Bush sent their way.

Robert Novak writes:

George W. Bush’s chances of engaging the country with a dynamic second-term initiative were sabotaged this week … Even John Maynard Keynes, no supply-sider, said 25 percent is the highest acceptable rate.

It seems Novak wants to get “dynamic” and “supply-side” in his writings in every irrelevant way possible – but I missed the thesis from Keynes that declared a tax rate above 25% as being unacceptable.

But let’s suppose that we decided to incorporate “dynamic scoring” to the GOP agenda of fiscal irresponsibility. In other words, suppose we modeled out the impact of long-term growth from the GOP’s desire to increase government spending combined with having our children foot the deferred tax bill. With George W. Bush’s desire to “give us money back” so we can consume more combined with the increases in government purchases, one would think that Nobel Prize winning Dr. Novak (well in his mind, he is the best economist ever) would realize that the reduction in national savings would equate to less long-term growth. So why don’t we make a deal with the free lunch supply-side camp – adopt dynamic scoring with the caveat that we get the sign right.