Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, the Senate should finally pass an extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to more than 2.5 million unemployed workers who have gone without a check for over six weeks. Central to this delay were Republican and a moderate Democrat's demands that Congress pay for the emergency extension. Many of those same members of Congress, however, change their tune when it comes to extending the Bush Tax Cuts.

Objecting to Congress passing a $30 billion extension of UI benefits without paying for them is not outlandish. The current economic environment with high unemployment, low demand, and a weak recovery would seem to argue for the immediate passage of a deficit-financed extension of emergency UI benefits, but one could make the argument against it. There are concerns with deficits and their repercussions. I don't think it's a very strong argument or a very correct one, but I get it.

If you do make the argument that Congress should offset an extension of UI benefits, though, it logically follows that you should also demand that Congress pay for the extension of a tax cut, since spending and tax cuts have the same budgetary effect on the Treasury Department: a loss of revenue.

Yet it seems that many of those members of Congress that are not willing to add roughly $30 billion to this year's deficit to help the unemployed pay their bills and stay in their homes, are perfectly fine with not paying for extending the Bush Tax Cuts that will cost the country some $678 billion.

Of course, arguing two seemingly contradictory positions like these would seem to require some extra strong piece of evidence or irrefutable logic, but the only thing these congressional members can come up with is that tax cuts pay for themselves.

Steve Benen over at Political Animal wryly observed today that this economic gibberish that tax cuts pay for themselves, which used to be referred to as "voodoo economics" in the 1980s, is now being labeled belief in the "tax fairy."

That sounds about right to me. Denying unemployment benefits – which I might add are the most stimulative of immediate fiscal policies – to the unemployed during an economic recession because they're not paid for is bad enough, but to then argue that a loss of revenue through tax cuts is fine and dandy because they pay for themselves is just completely divorced from reality.

Image by Flickr user Darrren Hester used under a Creative Commons license.