Item — HN Reader

The downside of doing so is that it still gives plenty of time to cancel the changes at year 12 or 16, once it becomes apparent who will stand to benefit/lose from the change. This type of hacking future benefits is evidence in many of the tax overhauls, which use predicted future savings to offset short-term costs. And often those future savings are legislated away before they come to fruition.

(Of course, sometimes those future savings wouldn't have happened anyways, due to unreasonably optimistic assumptions about the performance of the economy.)

2 comments

Cancelling such a scheduled change is harder though than simply blocking a change in the first place.

Exactly. Sunset provisions have large effects even though in principle they can always be removed if the majority in the future wanted to.

I encourage you to look into the history of copyright extension laws.

It's not that simple. First, I'm not sure that anyone knows who would benefit 8 years out. There will be guesses, sure, but nobody's really going to know how it plays out until after the first election under the new system. Even that won't really tell us much, because everyone will adjust their tactics after the first experience.

Second, even if everybody knew who was going to be the loser from the changes 8 years in advance, that's not enough. That party would have to be strong enough under the current system to undo the changes. In practice, that would require controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency... unless both parties decide that they would lose power to third parties, and strike a deal.