Josh Blackman » “Short-term spending bills and expiring tax provisions have existed almost as long as government, but the sheer volume of such measures has been increasing every year, and with them, fiscal policy experts say, government uncertainty and the related partisan imbroglios that are contributing to America’s ever dimmer view of Congress.”

“Short-term spending bills and expiring tax provisions have existed almost as long as government, but the sheer volume of such measures has been increasing every year, and with them, fiscal policy experts say, government uncertainty and the related partisan imbroglios that are contributing to America’s ever dimmer view of Congress.”

October 1st, 2011

I think these short-term fixes that accomplish little must be contradistinguished with long-term massive laws that create a host of problems.

“From a public policy viewpoint,” said Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, short-term deals “eat up a lot of legislators’ time. They can’t focus on any bigger issues because they keep spending all their time on these extensions. They create a lot of economic uncertainly, and feed into the public’s discontent and cynicism about the process because there is so much brinkmanship involved in these deals.”

While the fight over short-term spending deals — run-of-the-mill extenders that have twice this year led the country to the brink of a government shutdown — have gotten the most attention, it is actually the constantly expiring tax provisions that create more economic uncertainty.

Maybe to the extent that short-term bills take time away from large bills, they are actually a good thing!

Or, perhaps the costs of these short-term bills are less than large bills?

Food for thought.