EDITORIAL: Pelosi’s Revealing House Rules

...The Pelosi rules also carve out two key exceptions to Democratic pay-as-you-go budget promises. Democrats talk up “paygo” every election year, claiming Congress will offset new spending with cuts elsewhere. But Mrs. Pelosi lets paygo lapse when convenient, and her new rules give the House Budget Chairman unilateral authority to exempt from paygo any spending on Covid-19 or climate change.

Paygo is a budget gimmick, and Covid spending isn’t a surprise as an exception. But spending on climate? This is another indication that Democrats plan to use climate as the main political driver of their agenda to expand political control over the economy.

Joe Biden is appointing climate activists across the government—from energy to transportation to financial regulators. Mrs. Pelosi’s new rule will make it easier to fund this agenda since budget bills that are exempt from paygo would need only 51 votes in the Senate. If Democrats have a Senate majority, this is how they will pass Mr. Biden’s $2 trillion in climate spending.

Mrs. Pelosi calls this “bold reform,” but the better word is brazen. Voters rebuked House Democrats in November by cutting their majority to its narrowest since the 1940s, but don’t expect that to slow them on their mission to transform America. 

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