Shortly before leaving for Congress’ spring break, Republicans in both the House and Senate pushed a proposal to scrap the estate tax entirely, hoping to deliver another windfall for the wealthiest of the wealthy. This week, the CBO published a score on the fiscal consequences of the regressive idea.

Republican legislation in the House to repeal the federal estate tax would add nearly $270 billion to federal deficits, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The office projects the legislation offered by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) would result in revenue losses starting in 2016. The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation produced the score.

Adding nearly $270 billion to the deficit in order to give the top 0.2% of Americans a massive tax break seems like a tough sell, even for GOP lawmakers.

But let’s not overlook the fact that so many of the top priorities pushed by congressional Republicans this year have one thing in common: they raise the deficit that the GOP sometimes pretends to care about.

The bill would make permanent a tax break for research and experimentation that would increase the deficit by $177 billion over 10 years and also make permanent the deduction for state and local sales taxes, at a cost of $42 billion. The tax break for charitable giving would cost $14 billion. Despite Republicans’ frequent fearmongering about the deficit, they propose no spending or revenue offsets.