A news article in the national section of today's New York Times repeatedly uses the term "safety valve" to refer to a plan to make federal tax cuts contingent on budget surpluses. The use of this term seems to be the Times's own deliberate decision; the newspaper explains to readers at one point that "the safety valve approach" is "called a trigger mechanism in Congressional jargon." The newspaper could just as easily have written that "the trigger mechanism is called a safety valve approach in Times jargon."
The flaw with the Times jargon is that it suggests that there is something "safe" about the valve mechanism, something more safe than having the tax cuts go into effect without a surplus-related cutoff mechanism. That's an argument made by proponents of the trigger, but when the Times itself uses the polemical "safety valve" language in a news article, it's siding with the advocates of the proposal.
In fact, one could argue that the "safety valve" would be more accurately called a danger valve, because it would risk delaying expected tax cuts just when they are most needed -- at the time of an unexpected economic slowdown. That could make the slowdown even worse. The "safety valve" is also dangerous because the version being discussed would apply only to the tax cuts and not to spending, creating a presumption that the federal government is entitled to spend whatever it wants, and that the only controllable variable is tax rates.
Finally, the Times news article opines that "In the past, this kind of forced discipline has worked poorly. In the 1980s, the budget law required automatic spending cuts in each year that specific deficit goals were not met, but Congress invariably found ways around the law." Again, it's just weird for the Times to be slipping this kind of opinionated language into its news articles without attributing it to an expert. The idea that the Gramm-Rudman "forced discipline" to which the Times is apparently referring "worked poorly" is hardly a settled question. Arguably, it helped somewhat to restrain federal spending and -- alas -- to force some tax increases. In any event, forced discipline on government spending is a different animal than forced discipline on taxes. One of the ideas of the Bush tax cuts is to force discipline on government spending by giving the government less money to spend; a "safety valve" would eliminate that forced discipline, which is another reason it might be more accurate to describe it as a "danger valve."
A Bridge Too Close: A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that parts of "five local suspension bridges" were closed yesterday because of falling ice. The article names "the George Washington, Bronx-Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Verrazano-Narrows and Triborough Bridges." The article neglects to mention the fact that the bicycle and pedestrian pathway on the Brooklyn Bridge was closed yesterday afternoon because of the falling ice.