First Step for House GOP: Making It Easier to Increase the Deficit

Shocked, shocked I say...

In 2007, just weeks after Republicans lost control of the House and Senate and six years after the first passel of Bush tax cuts were signed into law, Democrats made a key change to the budget rules to prevent that episode from repeating itself.

Republicans had used the budget reconciliation process -- immune from a filibuster -- to pass the cuts and explode the deficit: two things the reconciliation process was never meant to allow. To get away with it, Republicans were forced to include a 10-year sunset in package -- planting the seeds for the tax cut fight we just saw on Capitol Hill. After Dems wrested control of Congress, they banned the reconciliation loopholes used by the GOP altogether.

But as they return to power in the House of Representatives, Republicans are taking steps to unravel those changes.

Usually it'll take a year, or at least a few months in office, for a party to give up on the platform of ideas on which it ran in the preceding election. But you have to hand it to Republicans; they managed to not only give up on deficit reduction but to actually embrace deficit creation even before their majority has been sworn in. Impressive!