http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/04/voodoo-econ/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;A number of Republicans have called for the CBO to incorporate what US News & World Report calls a “gimmick” that would result in tax cuts magically paying for themselves in future CBO scores. In fact, it would likely result in the CBO claiming that even deep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy would result in more revenues coming into the government’s coffers. We could have our cake and eat it, too!
The gimmick is called “dynamic scoring,” and is based on economic models that purport to show that tax cuts unleash so much new economic activity that ultimately, they result in more taxes being collected.
Budget guru Stan Collender, executive vice president of Qorvis Communications, tells Moyers & Company that to a degree both the CBO and Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation already use dynamic scoring. Economists agree that changes in taxation influence how much money individuals and corporations spend. “They just don’t use it to the extent that tax cut proponents want,” says Collender. “And there’s very little substantive evidence to justify the kind of dynamic scoring that they want.”
