Democrats Abandoning Pay-Go

Remember when Democrats campaigned on fiscal responsibility in 2006? Remember when they talked about “paygo,” which would require any new government spending tax relief to be “paid for” either with tax hikes or spending cuts? Here in North Dakota, home to Senate Budget Committee chair Kent “I Call Myself A Budget Hawk And My Sycophants In The Media Go Along With It” Conrad talked a lot about it. He championed it, in fact.
But now, two years later, the plan seems to be going the way of the dodo bird.

As Congress gears up to pass another spending “stimulus” bill, there’s one political silver lining: Democrats are being forced to abandon the pretense of fiscal conservatism known as “pay as you go” budgeting.
Late last week the leader of the House Blue Dog Coalition, Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, announced that with Barack Obama about to enter the White House, “I’m not sure the old rules are relevant anymore.” Why not? Because, Mr. Cooper said, “It would be unfair to the new President to put him in a budget straitjacket.”

Calling paygo a “pretense of fiscal conservatism” is exactly right, because Paygo has never been about slowing government spending (a loophole in the rule allowed for increased government spending as long as tax hikes were budgeted for) but rather slowing tax relief which couldn’t be passed into law without being coupled with spending cuts. What Democrats wanted to do was throw obstacles in the way of lowering taxes and spending while leaving loopholes available for spending increases.
So I’m not entirely sad to see it go, though I do have to stand back in awe of just how quickly Democrats threw under the bus a principle they once touted so vociferously. This is something the Democrats campaigned on in 2006, and now they’re not even talking about it.
Here in North Dakota, Senator Conrad especially looks weaselly on this one. I’d expect him to have to answer questions about this development from local reporters, but they can’t even be counted on to report on the political scandals Conrad’s involved in let alone the strange evolutions of his status as a self-appointed “budget hawk.”