If you think the choice between the House and Senate minimum wage tax packages is a coin-toss between two fully-offset, revenue-neutral, fiscally fungible approaches, think again. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' paper released today, Small Business Tax Package In Senate Minimum Wage Bill Poses Fiscal Risks, makes a strong case against the Senate's $8.3 billion package, built on two arguments:

• the offsets-as-opportunity-costs argument, is one we have voiced repeatedly -- here, here, and here -- that offsets used to pay for the $8.3 billion Senate package represent $7 billion more in offsets unavailable for other other initiative or deficit redunction than the House's $1.3 billion package. Concludes the report: "There consequently are concerns about the merit of these tax cuts as compared with other potential uses for the offsets."
• the offsets-and-sunsets problem: there are two new, temporary $1.9 billion accelerated tax write-off provisions in the Senate bill. Sure, they sunset on March 31, 2008, but who would wager against their extension, and re-extension? In which case, either they will consume more offsets with each extension (since almost none of the Senate bill offsets are permanent)

Or, worse: Many in Congress [support] extending expiring tax provisions such as the "extenders" without offsetting the costs [and] oppose applying the PAYGO rules to tax cuts... At some point, Congress may allow the PAYGO rules to lapse, or may choose to waive those rules when extending expiring tax provisions because it proves difficult to [agree on] offsets. If that occurs, the addition of the Senate's two new temporary tax cuts to the list of tax "extenders" would add to deficits ad infinitum. From a fiscal responsibility perspective, it hardly seems like a choice at all.