On Monday, House Republican leaders announced they would support the extension of the payroll tax cut without a corresponding "offset" in other federal spending. While that new approach is designed to tie Democrats' hands on passage of continued unemployment benefits and the so-called Medicare "doc fix," Speaker Boehner's switch represents a return to a supposedly ironclad principle. As the number two Senate Republican, Jon Kyl, put it during his party's successful 2010 crusade to maintain the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy, "You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."
Unless, of course, those receiving the tax cut are working Americans and the President proposing it is a Democrat. For months, Republicans have obstructed the $100 billion, one-year extension of the two percent drop in the payroll tax for 160 million Americans, refusing any new revenues to pay for it and demanding instead President Obama and Congressional Democrats gut other spending to cover the cost.
But as the New York Times' Jackie Calmes explained last fall, that position was a new one for Republicans in Congress:

Republican leaders have said they might support the payroll tax cut's extension if its cost is offset by equal spending cuts, a condition they did not apply for extending the Bush-era tax cuts on high incomes.

Which is exactly right. Because in 2010 when the GOP was fighting for more tax cuts for their "job creators" who don't create jobs, paying for them was out of the question.
That was the clear message 18 months ago, when Republicans demanded the extension of the Bush tax cuts for upper-income Americans at a ten-year cost of $700 billion. As Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the second-ranking Republican in the Senate explained in July 2010:

"You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset [the] cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."

Kyl's was just the latest repackaging of President Bush's long ago debunked claim that "you cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison parroted that line, "Every major tax cut we've had in history has created more revenue." Then House Minority Leader John Boehner agreed, insisting last June that the Bush tax cuts had nothing to do with the depleted U.S. Treasury, "It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit. The revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the economic collapse some 18 months ago." Confused as ever, Michele Bachmann in December warned about the "reduction to the Treasury in the Social Security taxes" even as she argued "It's curious to me that they say there's a cost involved when people are allowed to keep their own money." For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to defend Kyl's fuzzy math:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

George Costanza notwithstanding, just because Republicans believe it doesn't mean it's not a lie. Leave aside for the moment that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent, over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus - combined.

The Bush tax cuts not only didn't pay for themselves, they weren't paid for anywhere else in the federal budget. They were and continue to be the biggest drain on the U.S. Treasury, whose tax collections as percentage of the American economy hit a 60-year low in 2010. As the Washington Post summed up the CBO's conclusions regarding the causes of the nation's mounting debt last year, "The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts." A July analysis by the New York Times echoed that finding:

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here -- from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

But as Ezra Klein explained in the Washington Post, the revealing Times chart doesn't tell the full story of the impact of Bush-era policies on future debt facing Barack Obama:

What's also important, but not evident, on this chart is that Obama's major expenses were temporary -- the stimulus is over now -- while Bush's were, effectively, recurring. The Bush tax cuts didn't just lower revenue for 10 years. It's clear now that they lowered it indefinitely, which means this chart is understating their true cost. Similarly, the Medicare drug benefit is costing money on perpetuity, not just for two or three years. And Boehner, Ryan and others voted for these laws and, in some cases, helped to craft and pass them.

But that was then and this is now. And now Republicans are getting battered by voters and economists alike for stonewalling the payroll tax cut extension and other of President Obama's measures aimed at keeping the momentum of the U.S. recovery. As John Boehner and his lieutenants Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy put it Monday:

"Because the president and Senate Democratic leaders have not allowed their conferees to support a responsible bipartisan agreement, today House Republicans will introduce a backup plan that would simply extend the payroll tax holiday for the remainder of the year while the conference negotiations continue regarding offsets, unemployment insurance, and the 'doc fix.'"

Which means that maybe, just maybe, Republicans might finally do for working Americans living paycheck to paycheck what the GOP once reserved only for the rich.