Change Scoring Rules to Make these Known Legislators should know the all-in costs of tax and spending bills they vote on, right? It's a no-brainer. These are often substantial amounts. In the stimulus package signed by the president yesterday, for example, "The tax breaks in the package will cost more than $22 billion over the next 11 years, or roughly $15 billion more than the government's long-term estimate of $7.5 billion," the Wall Street Journal informs us. Some think it's a partisan issue: Conservative analysts like to ignore the effect of additional interest payments that result from tax cuts, because they generally want the costs of tax cuts to appear smaller. This might be more easily ignored in other situations, but in the case of the business tax breaks that are part of the stimulus package, the additional interest actually triples the costs. That doesn't hold water. These same folks should be equally interested in making known the true cost of spending bills. And what of the progressive interest in full accounting of the cost of tax cuts? Here's an idea to make known to legislators and the public the true costs involved: OMBW's Mandatory Deficit Impact Statement.