Republicans want to use a nonstandard accounting move known as the “current policy baseline” to make their tax cut and spending bill — which will be the focus of their work over the next three weeks — less expensive on paper.
The policy baseline is an accounting assumption that projects the revenue effects of current tax law into the future, baking in a $4 trillion to $5 trillion cost as opposed to having it show up as a line item in revenue tables.
Why some Republicans want to go this route: Current tax law expires at the end of this year. Assuming for accounting purposes that the 2017 tax law goes on is exactly what Republicans cannot legally do, and is the reason they are working concertedly to extend it.
While policy baselines have appeared in legislative debates before, budget experts told The Hill they’ve never been central to a scoring question.
“It’s not unusual for policymakers to use a current policy or alternative baseline for presentation purposes,” Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said. “What differs here is using it for scorekeeping and enforcement purposes.”
“To my knowledge, they’ve never used current policy to try to estimate the effects of a reconciliation instruction or other changes to the budget resolution. Doing that would essentially allow them to hide borrowing,” he said.
Not all Republicans agree that the policy baseline approach should be used over current law. One vocal critic on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has been Rep. David Schweikert (Ariz.), who has called it intellectually fraudulent.
— Tobias Burns
