New York Times, Tilting the Budget Process to the GOP, by Bruce Bartlett:

The House of Representatives voted last week to tilt the budgetary process in favor of the Republican economic agenda. On Feb. 3, the House passed H.R. 3582, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2012. Innocuous on the surface, its long-term purpose is to institutionalize Republican economic policy into the very fabric of budgetary analysis.

The legislation would require that the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation do a “dynamic” analysis of major legislation – defined as that with a gross budgetary impact greater than 0.25 percent of the gross domestic product. Such an analysis would calculate the impact on real GDP growth, the capital stock and labor supply.

The dynamic calculation would be supplementary and not replace the current official scoring methodology, but the obvious long-term goal is to require official revenue estimates to incorporate Laffer curve effects in order to make it easier to cut taxes and harder to raise them. The Laffer curve, named for the economist Arthur Laffer, posits that tax rates may be so high that a tax-rate reduction will raise revenue to the government and a tax-rate increase will lower revenue.

While no economist denies the theoretical possibility of a revenue-raising tax cut or revenue-losing tax increase, Republicans talk as if the United States is always on the high side of the Laffer curve – no matter what the tax rates are – so every tax cut will pay for itself and no tax increase could possibly ever raise net revenue and thus reduce the deficit. …

Over the last three years, we have seen Republicans politicize every aspect of policy making – filibustering virtually every administration bill and appointment in the Senate, risking default on the national debt by refusing to raise the debt limit, and routinely threatening government shutdowns unless the White House accedes to their demands. It is reasonable to assume that the Republicans’ effort to alter the budget process is just another aspect of their goal to politicize policy and institutionalize their philosophy.