ON THE DEMOCRATS 'PAYGO' SYSTEM

“[The Democrats’ PAYGO] rules require that whenever the House or the Senate legislatively expands mandatory spending—mostly for entitlements—or reduces taxes, the hit to the budget must be offset by a cut in other mandatory spending, or an increase in other taxes... Paygo was deliberately fashioned in order to make opponents of tax hikes into villains for blocking new entitlements; it also makes it harder to avoid tax hikes and trim government spending. And it lets defenders of discretionary spending off the hook—since under the House paygo rule, increases in discretionary spending do not need to be offset at all. Paygo is a way of diverting attention from the wisdom taught by Milton Friedman: The true burden of government is what it spends—not what it takes in taxes.”

—Stephen Entin,
Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation