So the next round in the deficit battle relates the congressional supercommittee, which is assigned finding about $2 trillion in additional cuts by the end of the year. And right off the bat, we see a dispute over which baseline the CBO should use in assessing the effect of any proposals.
Paul Ryan's cynical jockeying on the matter is almost laughable. As I understand it, he says the CBO should use current law as the baseline, which means we should assume all the Bush tax cuts will expire. In that context, any Dem effort to extend the cuts for the middle class would drive up the deficit (because it shrinks revenues).
But how insane is that? If baselines are supposed to be the best estimate of how the real world will look, the corollary would be that Republicans actually believe all the cuts will expire. [If that were the case, the actual deficit would come down 40%, given the central role the Bush tax cuts have played in creating shortfalls.]
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