House Speaker Mike Johnson’s first big piece of legislation could’ve been easy. The Louisiana Republican and his GOP leadership team were eager to move an aid bill related to the Israel-Hamas war, and it appeared likely to advance with a fair amount of bipartisan support.
But the new House leader decided that wouldn’t quite be good enough. Instead, Johnson said he wanted to “offset” the costs of the $14.3 billion emergency funding package by cutting an equal amount from the Internal Revenue Service. The goal, Johnson said, was to prevent increasing the budget deficit.
It fell to the Congressional Budget Office to remind the new speaker that he got the arithmetic backward: The bill would add $26.8 billion to the deficit.
As NBC News reported, Johnson didn’t respond especially well to the news.
Johnson said Wednesday he was “not surprised at all” by the CBO score that showed the legislation adding billions to the deficit. “Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,” Johnson said.
We’ll probably never know for sure, but I’d love to know whether the House speaker genuinely doesn’t understand budget arithmetic, or if he was just pretending to be foolish.
NEW: @SpeakerJohnson on CBO score for his Israel aid package: “Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit” pic.twitter.com/8C0fY5THGt
— Kelly Phares (@kellyfphares) November 1, 2023
I can appreciate the fact that the federal budget and the congressional appropriations process can be complex, but in this instance, the math is relatively simple. The IRS collects money for the federal government. The more Congress cuts funding for the IRS, the less the IRS will collect for Congress to spend.
It’s precisely why cutting spending on enforcing tax laws ends up costing more, not less. It’s really not that complicated.
What’s more, the $26.8 billion figure is a conservative estimate. IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel added that if the Republicans’ bill were to pass, it would actually cost American taxpayers closer to $90 billion.
As a result, Johnson’s preferred budget “offset” wouldn’t actually offset the costs; it would do the opposite.
What we’re left with is a straightforward dynamic in which House Republicans have effectively declared, “We’ll assist Israel, but only if we can undermine federal law enforcement and help tax cheats in a way that makes the budget deficit bigger.”
Johnson’s first significant legislative endeavor is offering timely evidence that the GOP congressman isn’t good at math. His bill is nevertheless likely to get a floor vote this week. Watch this space.
