Senate plan to cut Social Security and Medicare is based on imaginary theory of legislation

For a little while, there was good reason to be nervous about reports of a new bipartisan Gang of Six Senators that was looking into resurrecting the deficit commission in legislative form. Fortunately, it has now been revealed that this gang is just working on imaginary legislation. Here?s the first paragraph in the Wall Street Journal article describing the effort:

A bipartisan group of senators is considering legislation that would trigger new taxes and budget cuts if Congress fails to meet a set of mandatory spending targets and other fiscal goals aimed at reducing federal deficits.

There are about 30 paragraphs in this article, but let?s pause right there. In just one sentence, we have already entered the territory of imaginary legislation.

Current Congresses cannot force future Congresses to do anything. Every year, Congress can pass whatever spending and tax levels that have enough support to pass the House, the Senate and the White House. A sitting Congress does not have to do what members of Congress told them to do last year, five years ago, or 200 years ago.

Take the Bush tax cuts, for example. When those were passed into law, they were set to expire after 10 years. However, they didn?t expire after 10 years, because Congress just passed a new law extending them for another two years. In two years' time, Congress will probably do the same thing again, thus putting an end to the two-year trigger in the recent tax cut deal. And any future Congress can do this to any law.

With that in mind, let?s return to the make-believe legislation this group of "serious" deficit hawks is working on:

The Senate group's working plan calls for placing separate caps on security and nonsecurity spending, and missing a budget target in one area would not trigger mandatory cuts in the other. The spending targets would follow proposals laid out by the deficit commission, which recommended cutting discretionary spending by $1.7 trillion through 2020. Lawmakers on the spending committees would draft legislation to meet the targets. But if they were not met, automatic, across-the-board cuts would go into effect.

No, those cuts would not automatically go into effect. At that time, if they want to do so, Congress and the White House can just pass a new law preventing those cuts from going into effect.

More make-believe:

The tax-writing committees would be given two years to overhaul both the individual and corporate tax codes, with general instructions to close tax breaks and minimize or eliminate tax deductions while lowering tax rates. The committees would be given a target for additional revenues to be raised by the new code. The deficit commission's version of tax reform would net $180 billion in additional revenues over 10 years.

If Congress failed to enact the tax code overhaul, the legislation would mandate an across-the-board tightening of tax deductions to meet the higher target.

No, it wouldn?t mandate anything. That future Congress can just pass a new law that the current or future president can sign.

And yet the fiction continues:

Changes to Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements such as agriculture subsidies and military and civil service retirement plans would also have to meet fixed targets. Social Security, however, would not incur automatic penalties if lawmakers failed to make changes.

If the Social Security effort failed, the deficit commission's plan?a mix of raising the level of wages subject to Social Security taxes, slowly increasing the retirement age and other smaller changes?would go to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

Is this legislation going to order US Marshalls to arrest whoever the Senate Majority Leader is at the time if s/he doesn?t bring the deficit commission?s vague recommendations to an up or down vote? Also, what?s the name, number and text of the Senate bill in this future Congress that will have to be given an up-or-down vote if these targets aren?t met? Since when can Senators submit bills to future Congresses, much less force those future Congresses to vote on those bills?

As "serious" as these deficit "hawks" are portrayed, they are engaged in the fundamentally unserious and imaginary work of trying to pass laws that will bind future Congresses. That, however, is impossible, due to the rather obvious fact that future Congresses can change current laws. It?s a good thing Congresses can do this, too, as our existing body of law should not be eternal and unchanging. If it were, then even the possibility of democracy would be denied to all future generations.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/AXHexexBcjc/-Senate-plan-to-cut-Social-Security-and-Medicare-is-based-on-imaginary-theory-of-legislation

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