House Adopts New Math Rules

“House Republicans on Tuesday formally adopted a controversial change to congressional math rules that will most likely make it easier to cut taxes,” Politico reports.

“In one of the first acts of the 114th Congress, Republicans in a largely party-line vote of 234-172 approved the rules ordering lawmakers’ budget referees to incorporate the economic effects of legislation into their cost estimates — known as dynamic scoring.”

Jonathan Chait: “The whole reason the Republican Congress is instituting dynamic scoring comes as a response to its attempt to write a tax reform bill last year. The idea was to lower tax rates while eliminating loopholes and preferences. But Republicans discovered that, while lowering rates is easy, eliminating preferences is hard.”