Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) voiced support for House Republicans’ move to switch to a type of budget scoring that assumes tax cuts create economic growth and counterbalance lost revenue.
Speaking in New Hampshire on Thursday, Bush was asked about House Republicans’ move to adopt the “dynamic scoring” method for scoring budgets. Although critics argue that this approach to scoring is essentially “fairy dust”
and “cooks the books” on budget scoring, many Republicans and even a few conservative Democrats have pushed for using the controversial method.
In December of last year, House Republicans opted to not reappoint Doug Elmendorf as the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, essentially paving the way to adopt dynamic scoring. At the beginning of 2016, House GOPers passed a rule requiring all budgets to use dynamic scoring in budget estimates.
Bush first said he was “all in” for eliminating the “bean counters” who use the traditional “static scoring” method.
“The House has done this and I think it’s the right thing,” Bush said in New Hampshire on Thursday. He went on to praise House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who, in Sept 2014, actually floated the idea that the CBO adopt dynamic scoring.
“One of the guys I most respect in Washington D.C. is Paul Ryan. He’s thoughtful, he’s optimistic, he believes that if you create the right conditions all of us interacting amongst ourselves will create far more benefits for far more people,” Bush said.
Watch the video of Bush, via opposition research outfit American Bridge, below:
now they are dismissing accounting practices in favor of fairy dust accounting…how f’d up is that?
Perhaps, before Mr Bush (the latest) and Mr. Ryan (the former) get all giddy over “dynamic scoring,” they could deign to show us peons even ONE instance of major tax cuts leading to a flowering of economic boomtimes for us peons.
Shall we look at Kansas, where Gov. Brownback, chief high priest in the Church of Laffer, has been cooking his tax cut test tubes for over 5 years now as the state’s deficit grows, schools are ending instruction weeks early because they have no more money, and those who still manage to qualify for welfare, learn that they can only get it via ATM cards that limit their spending to $25 of withdrawals a day and charge them for every withdrawal. I can hardly wait to buy a house there.
Louisiana? I think the latest deficit estimate there is $1.6 billion and climbing.
Latest I heard from Scott Walker, who apparently is too busy running for President to actually care about the miracles he has wrought, Wisconsin is looking at a shortfall in the $2 billion range.
Now you could argue that before making decisions like these, you look at the evidence, but to the GOP, evidence is what they tell you it is. Economics, scientists, doctors? We don’t need no “steeenkin”…Trust us. This will work because we say so.
Remember…you can’t spell Conservative without “Con”.
Dynamic scoring…If elected Jeb will be the third Bush to cause a recession…