By giving this report some visibility, David Broder has just earned the benefit of the doubt as to his honesty. Cutting to the chase:

It involves the treatment in the budget of the Bush tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001 and 2003.

Those rate reductions, when enacted, had expiration dates of 2010, designed to keep their long-term costs within the limits set by the budget resolutions of which they were a part. The president is urging Congress to make those tax cuts permanent, but his proposal is controversial and has not yet passed.

This year, however, the budget the president submitted on Feb. 6 simply assumes that the tax cuts have been made permanent -- and thus includes them in the "baseline" for all future years.

The effect, according to the center's analysis, is that "legislation to make these tax cuts permanent will be scored as having no cost whatsoever."

So as not to further damage Mr. Broder's standing as a conservative, further discussion will reference the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities's report he was kind enough to highlight.

The Administration’s proposed change to the baseline rules must be considered in the context of a budget gimmick used to facilitate passage of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. The Administration and the Congressional leadership sunset the tax-cut provisions in these packages for the purpose of making their costs look smaller.  This allowed more tax cuts to be squeezed into the legislation without breaching the cost limits that had been imposed on the measures.  This gimmick worked because CBO is required under the rules to assume that tax cuts that are slated to expire will, in fact, expire and thus will not have costs after they sunset.

The Administration’s proposed change to the baseline rules would require CBO to reverse its current approach and to assume there would be no cost associated with extending these tax cuts beyond their sunset dates.  The first gimmick, used when the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were passed, helped get those tax cuts enacted into law.  Now, the second gimmick is intended to help ensure these tax cuts become a permanent fixture of the tax code.  Both gimmicks have been designed to make the “scoring” of Congressional action on these tax cuts understate the actual impact of the tax cuts on the budget.

And this is a problem because

This argument is highly misleading, however, as it glosses over a critical fact.  If legislation proposes that an entitlement sunset after a few years, CBO will nonetheless score the cost of the proposal as if it were permanent, ignoring the sunsets.  As a result, Congress cannot artificially lower the cost of entitlement legislation by imposing sunset dates.  Stated another way, the gimmick of imposing artificial sunset dates that was used to pack more tax cuts into the 2001 and 2003 tax-cut packages would not have worked if the proposals had been entitlement changes rather than tax cuts.  If the tax cuts had been scored as entitlement changes are, CBO would have been required under the budget rules to ignore the tax-cut sunset dates and to score the cost of the tax-cut changes as if they were permanent.

The Administration’s proposal, by changing the rules after the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were enacted but before they are extended, would ensure that the cost of continuing the tax cuts in the years after the current sunset dates would never be counted.  The costs in those years were not counted when the tax cuts were first enacted (as the costs would have been if the rules that apply to entitlements had been used).  Now, the Administration is proposing that the costs for those years also be ignored when the tax cuts are extended.  To fail ever to count the cost of tax cuts in the years after the sunset dates — neither when the tax cuts were first enacted nor when they are extended — would represent one of the largest and most flagrant budget gimmicks in recent memory.

The Administration’s proposal would not be a gimmick if it applied only to new tax cuts.  Then, the Administration could legitimately argue that it was calling for parallel treatment of entitlement and tax changes, and its proposal would serve to shut down the gimmick used to help pass the 2001 and 2003 tax cut bills.  But the Administration’s proposal specifically excludes new tax cuts, and applies only to the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, thereby undermining its supposed rationale of parallel treatment for tax and entitlement changes.  Evidently, the Administration prefers to preserve the gimmick for new tax cuts so the gimmick can continue being used to help pass tax-cut measures in the future.

Now...how many Republicans know they are supporting this level of mendacity? How many would care? And I'm not making any implications with those questions...I'd just really like to know.