How can a tax increase be called a tax cut? Washington's tax-scoring magic.

Budget bean-counters measure tax hikes from a baseline that assumes tax rates are going up. Thus, merely extending the existing rates is called a tax cut and gets headlines as such -- even though the extension just maintains the status quo.

Permanent new taxes are then attached to the so-called cuts and labeled "offsets," a technical term for a tax hike. But these new taxes often get little attention. Adding to the size of the offsets, the growth benefits of maintaining current rates (and the harm from letting the rates rise) are arbitrarily excluded from the congressional scoring process.

The net effect of the current system is a strong upward ratchet in tax rates and tax complexity. Even many anti-tax Republicans seem to have acquiesced. Budget baselines build in repeated tax increases, as if those are normal, and assume that economic growth, stock prices and home prices are unaffected by higher tax rates. A more pro-growth Congress could pay for maintaining existing tax rates, if it thought that was necessary, by restraining the budget's built-in spending increases. But this choice seldom, if ever, materializes.