Josh Bivens: The Bad Economics of PAYGO Swamp Any Strategic Gain from Adopting It: "A PAYGO rule means that any tax cut or spending increase passed into law needs to be offset in the same spending cycle with tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.... Many Washington insiders assert forcefully that committing to PAYGO rules in the House for the next Congress is good politics.... The strength of evidence supporting this political claim is debatable. What’s less debatable is that PAYGO really has hindered progressive policymaking in the not-so-recent past. For example, it was commitments to adhere to PAYGO that led to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) having underpowered subsidies for purchasing insurance and, even more importantly, having a long lag in implementation...
#noted
