The following is the current schedule of congressional action with respect to the:

• War Spending Supplemental (H.R. 1591):
  • April 23 -- House conferees (appointed April 19) to meet meet with Senate counterparts in first public conference committee meeting, 4:30 p.m., HC-5 Capitol Bldg.
  • April 25 or 26 -- House consideration Conference Report
  • April 26 or 27 -- Senate consideration of Conference Report
  • May 31 -- Target date for passage of second ("post-veto") supplemental bill

• FY08 Budget Resolution (H Con Res 99; S Con Res 21):
  • April 26 or 27 -- Appointment of House Conferees
  • May 15 -- Target Date for passage of Conference Report

Paul Krugman's column today highlights what seems to me an unintended but good consequence of the PAYGO world: rooting out corporate welfare.

The column (available here for non-subscribers) is about a proposal to offset an expansion of SCHIP, a health insurance program for kids, by eliminating the Medicare Advantage progam, which by Krugman's account is a wasteful subsidy for private health insurers. Though Krugman does not mention it, PAYGO was probably the inspiration to link this program expansion with a program elimination, as the package is more or less deficit-neutral and therefore not subject to a PAYGO point of order.

Program A is the proposal by Senator Hillary Clinton and Representative John Dingell to cover all children by expanding the highly successful State Children's Health Insurance Program. To pay for that expansion, Democrats are talking about ... shutting down Program B, the huge subsidy to private insurance plans ... so-called Medicare Advantage plans — created by the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act. The numbers for that trade-off add up, with a little room to spare. ...

Similar things are happening with attempts to close the "tax gap," or the difference between the amount of taxes owed and actually paid. Proposals are being floated to increase tax information reporting on stock sales, and shut down offshore tax havens. This legislation could gain momentum by becoming PAYGO offsets.

Taking on wealthy people and powerful industries is never easy. But PAYGO makes doing so much more likely. In a PAYGO world, good things like more health care for kids have to be paid for with more revenues or program cuts. Eliminating wasteful spending on corporations and the wealthy, or catching wealthy tax dodgers, are easier way to pays for these programs than raising taxes.

If PAYGO isn't around, legislators would have less incentive to root out waste - and more opportunity to increase the deficit, which can cause problems for programs down the road.

In a paid-for package, the public also sees why these corporate subsidies are truly damaging- they're a fiscal trade-off where money is taken away from public programs that benefit us all and given to industries that don't need it. Eliminating waste isn't just "soaking the rich;" it's about providing for the common good.

Check out Dana's latest post on TPM Cafe- The Budget Resolutions: Whose Largest Tax Increase in History?

By the time Congress left town for Easter recess last week, both the House and the Senate had adopted Fiscal Year 2008 federal budget resolutions. The two resolutions were remarkably similar and, in fact, closely tracked the budget proposed by President Bush in early February. All three budgets called for about $2.9 trillion in spending next year. They all claimed to produce surpluses by the year 2012. The spending increases they proposed in the next fiscal year were all within four percent of each other in real terms. And none called for tax increases.

Citizens For Tax Justice has a good piece on the "biggest tax increase in history" line being used by every Republican on the planet.

The budget resolutions in the Senate and the House do not by themselves increase or decrease taxes, but they do make Congress "pay for" any further tax cuts by setting up PAYGO rules that ensure that new tax cuts do not increase the deficit. Enacting more tax cuts is what, in a legal sense, extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would be, since they expire in 2010, and new legislation would have to be passed to continue them.

President Bush, on the other hand, proposed to "pay for" new tax cuts with enormous spending reductions (the biggest spending cut in history?), but did not request that Congress enact a PAYGO rule that would have more or less required cuts of this magnitude if the tax cuts were extended.

If Bush were serious about offsetting the tax cuts, why wouldn't he ask for PAYGO?

PAYGO distinguishes the Bush budget and the Democrat's budgets. The President's budget wants more tax cuts even if they increase the deficit, while the Democrat's budget would allow more tax cuts only if they do not increase the deficit. This difference is an indication of how the parties intend to deal with the expiration of the tax cuts in 2010.