Just a thought - contingency legislation

We re repeatedly held hostage (metaphorically) by politicians who say that unless we do X, then Y (generally catastrophic) will occur. When it doesn't there is always a contingency-based excuse: "it would have happened had there been less Z".

We need a different approach, one that creates accountability ex-ante. So how about this... The example is in the context of the current deficit / budget negotiations.  The discussion is highly simplified and stylized (to use the economists phrase) for the purposes of illustration.

Republications assert that reducing government spending without raising tax rates or closing exemption loop holes will reduce uncertainty. This will spur firms to invest and create jobs in the US - which will increase tax receipts. So while spending falls, revenues rise and the budget will soon be balanced.  

Democrats argue that this probably won't happen; employers haven't shown any interested in creating (expensive) US based jobs when they can get the same work done abroad for pennies on the dollar.

Suppose one crafted legislation that said we'll do A which is predicted to lead to Y within time T. If by time T, Y hasn't happened, we'll do B. In this example, this might be: "We will cut spending and leave tax rates unchanged for 24 months. If by then unemployment hasn't risen, the conjecture that lower tax rates stimulate growth and job creation is shown to be invalid, at which point we will go to Plan B, namely closing tax loop holes and letting the Bush tax cuts expire".  The contingency, B, would require a 2/3 majority to repeal or nullify, so that only when a super-majority agrees that neither plan is working could the 'experiment' be undone.  

There are clearly a hundred and one reasons why this might not work, but I'm just a little tired of politicians making untested assertions about causal relations that are at best spurious, and often  based on claims of association or data that are completely false (such as the economy grows when tax rates are lowered, or that tax rates and the tax burden has never been higher when tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are at an all time low).

As I write this I can see how the two statements may be reconciled, but that is a testable hypothesis. And I've not heard anyone citing such a study...