Taxes Fantasies

The new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has changed the rules of the game, protecting legislators facing ethics probes and manipulating the way to assess tax breaks, among other changes.

The most significant of these modifications is the imposition of “dynamic scoring” when calculating the economic impact of lowering taxes. This means that the legislative offices in charge of assessing the impact of a law will have to follow new, more subjective rules, adding a touch of science fiction to their conclusions.

The accounting change means that not only the concrete effects will be taken into account, but also political considerations. Apart from the impact on the budget, also the supposed benefits of the tax breaks on the economic recovery will have to be considered.

Not one single tax break for the past 40 years has created the much-touted economic regeneration, and now it must be taken as fact, using made-up numbers. This only allows Republicans to claim that their tax-cutting plans will be more beneficial to the economy than what they really are.

At the same time, changes on the rules of the House Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics are making it more difficult to prove wrongdoings committed by legislators, giving them more tools to block and delay any investigation.

In addition, among the new rules they extended the Republican lawsuit against the Presidential use of executive action, and reauthorized a panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Last year, a similar committee cleared the White House of wrongdoing, but this insistence only aims to harm the presidential ambitions of Hillary Clinton, who back then was Secretary of State.

The new rules protect the corrupt and destroy economical objectivity in exchange for fantasies. And, worst of all, this is only the beginning