America has a real problem with expiration dates. Now, you may think you know what a date means on food in your refrigerator: If it’s past that date, it’s time for you to throw that item away. The real truth of the matter is that’s not the case at all. (https://www.nytimes.com/article/expiration-dates-coronavirus.html) Different kinds of food and drink items have different dates on their products – sometimes it’s a ‘Sell By’ date, which is supposed to be the last date that a store should sell the product. Other times, it’s a ‘Best By’ date, which simply means that a food or beverage tastes best if consumed by that date. Sometimes it’s a completely different term used to describe the date on a package. The problem is that many people simply assume all these dates are real expiration dates, when in fact they rarely are, and base their decisions on whether food has gone bad on that date rather than their own sense of taste and smell. The lack of a national standard or definition for the dates on food and beverages leads to an enormous amount of food waste in this country as people throw away perfectly good food.

We have a similar problem with expiration dates on government programs: They’re even less reality-based than those on food, and less widely understood. In fact, nearly every time federal or state governments pass a new program of any kind that has an expiration date on it, they’re lying to the public about it (and, possibly, themselves). These dates aren’t really dates when the politicians expect a certain program to end – they’re the date on which the funding for the program ends. Congress often chooses to set up programs with end dates simply to lower the overall price tag and make it palatable to moderates in both parties, but it’s all purely political theater.

Elected officials know how hard it is to do away with any popular program; that’s why there’s virtually never any serious spending cuts in Washington, no matter which party is in control. So, rather than be honest with their colleagues and the American people about the true cost of their proposals, they give it a fictitious end date, pushing the responsibility on to their successors. This is done all too much by both parties: Republicans like to do it with tax cuts, while Democrats like to do it with social programs. Then, when the time comes up for these initiatives to be renewed, Republicans can yell that Democrats are raising taxes if they don’t renew their cuts, while Democrats can say Republicans are heartlessly cutting services if they don’t renew their programs. It’s an easy way for both parties to pander to their base and pass the buck off to someone else, but it’s a terribly irresponsible way to govern.

At the federal level, these kind of fiscal hijinks are not merely allowed – federal law and the rules of the U.S. Senate encourage them. The budget reconciliation process, which allows either party to duck around the filibuster to pass some legislation on a majority vote, encourages the use of sunset provisions. A provision of the rules governing the reconciliation process requires these bills to be budget neutral. Unfortunately, that provision is time-limited, so rather than encouraging fiscal discipline it led wily politicians to come up with the sunset provision in order to duck around it. As with many proposals labeled reforms, it ended up accomplishing the exact opposite of what its proponents intended, encouraging runaway spending rather than budgetary discipline.

All of this is important to keep in mind as Democrats continue to push through their multi-trillion dollar social spending package. While a few moderate Democrats have been trying to lower the overall cost, in a sense they’re focusing on a figure that doesn’t actually mean that much. That overall price tag only reflects a portion of the true cost of these programs, thanks to sunset provisions. Liberal Democrats and moderates alike know this; the real difference between them isn’t their approach, but that moderates worry about the bigger number being used in a campaign ad against them. So, while it may seem like they’re trying to rein in spending, in fact they’re fighting to preserve their own political futures, not the nation’s long-term fiscal health. If they were truly concerned about the latter, they’d be trying to decrease the nation’s nearly three-trillion dollar deficit rather than fighting over how much to add to it.

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