It appears likely that congressional Republicans are eventually going to accept a tax increase in exchange for real spending cuts smaller spending increases in the future. If and when that happens, Speaker Boehner should surround himself with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy at the press conference on the deal.
I could spend days explaining my pessimism, but I’ll just point to two pertinent examples of Congress being unable to control itself. First, we have the so-called Medicare “doc fix,” which was adeptly explained by Reason’s Peter Suderman earlier this week. In 1997, Congress created a formula (“sustainable growth rate”) to constrain physician reimbursements. But shortly after the formula started to do what it was intended to, Congress got cold feet:
The next year, when the formula called for another reimbursement cut, Congress passed an override. And each year since, Congress has followed the same pattern. The SGR calls for a reimbursement cut. Congress either freezes payments or gives physicians a small increase for a short period of time. Sometimes the overrides last for a few months. More often they last for about a year. But a permanent fix never arrives. And each time the formula calls for a bigger cut—because with each override, Medicare’s physician payment levels grow further and further from the trendline called for by the formula. If the doc fix is allowed to occur this year, physicians face a 26.5 percent cut in Medicare fees. At the same time, the long-term cost of a permanent fix grows each year. Last year’s one-year fix cost $18.5 billion. This year’s is expected to cost about $25 billion. Estimates put the cost between $244 and $370 billion over a decade. The ever-rising cost means that with each override the chances of a permanent fix grow even harder.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/promises-restrict-future-spending-are-worthless
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