Ezra Klein lays out the the fact the tax breaks and expenditures amount to the same thing. So the current Republi-CON fixation on not even closing loopholes in the tax code actually makes no sense. Of course that's not the only thing that makes not sense.
The short version: "Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan says that tax expenditures are “misclassified” because they are identical to outlays. Gregory Mankiw, who led President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, calls expenditures 'stealth spending implemented through the tax code.' You can’t find a serious economist on God’s green Earth who thinks the economy differentiates between cutting a government program that subsidizes health insurance and cutting an equally large tax break that subsidizes the purchase of health insurance. The crude budget calculus that counts every dollar in spending cuts as a win for Republicans and every dollar in revenue increases as a win for Democrats is simply wrong..."
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