Accounting gimmickry

Gene Sperling at the Center for American Progress calls the Bush tax-cut sunsets “Cinderella tax cut accounting”: since the tax cuts, like Cinderella’s lovely gown, will supposedly disappear with a poof. (Disappearing gowns — now that’s a real “wardrobe malfunction.”)

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities lays out much larger accounting gimmicks hidden in the 2005 budget:

cutting off the forecasts at 2009, conveniently before the ticking Social Security-Medicare time bomb is set to explode

creating tax giveaways (especially the tax-advantaged savings accounts) which spiral in cost after 2009, but have minimal or negative short-term costs

taking the costs of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorism and evil everywhere off-budget

never mentioning the potential cost of Alternative Minimum Tax reform

overstating 2004 deficits, to make 2009 deficits look better by comparison

putting a cap on all discretionary spending — but understating defense spending growth, thus forcing larger cuts in domestic programs (at least 15.2% by 2009, adjusted for inflation and population)

increasing funding for certain domestic programs in 2005, but cutting in 2006

identifying various “miscellaneous” savings, like “waste, fraud, and abuse” and “we’ll work with Congress to find a way to pay for the medical savings accounts”

rewriting “pay-as-you-go” rules to specifically apply only to government subsidies to poor folks, while specifically exempting subsidies for rich people and corporations from further budgetary scrutiny

similarly, “baselining” the Bush tax cuts so that CBO can no longer track how much they’re costing — and hiding the cost of extensions past their sunset

inflating even the paltry 0.5% increase in domestic discretionary spending by including foreign aid and other programs; the real increase is 0.1% before inflation

Hey, Enron Economics worked for the Texas Republicans before. No reason why it can’t work now, I suppose. (Speaking of which, why isn’t Kenneth Lay in jail yet?) And, at least for now, it looks like the investors are still buying, putting off a dollar collapse for another day. Hopefully, of course, after the election — just like the findings of the “Why No WMDs?” Commission and the 9/11 Commission and, well, anything else that might cause the slightest bit of embarrassment to the administration. (All this shifting of deadlines really makes me worry about what they’ve got planned for Term Two.)