Besides the draconian cuts in the safety net and programs for women and the poor, the Trump/Mulvaney budget includes a double scoop of voodoo economics.
Larry Summers: Trump’s budget is simply ludicrous — www.washingtonpost.com/…
Apparently, the budget forecasts that U.S. economic growth will rise to 3.0 percent because of the administration’s policies — largely its tax cuts and perhaps also its regulatory policies. Fair enough if you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.
Then the administration asserts that it will propose revenue neutral tax cuts with the revenue neutrality coming in part because the tax cuts stimulate growth! This is an elementary double count. You can’t use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue. At least you cannot do so in a world of logic.
This is a mistake no serious business person would make. It appears to be the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.
In plain words -
Trump’s First Budget Works Only if Wishes Come True — www.nytimes.com/…
In its inaugural budget, the Trump administration projected that booming economic growth would allow the president to keep a wide range of expensive campaign promises while eliminating federal deficits in 10 years.
It is wishful thinking.
The budget promises a deep tax cut for businesses and consumers that would not reduce federal revenue. An increase in military spending would be offset by trillions of dollars of unspecified or loosely sketched reductions in federal spending.
And it all works because the budget assumes an acceleration of economic growth to an annual pace of 3 percent a year, much higher than the post-recession average of 2 percent.
Follow the twitter chain for Seth’s exposition —
President Trump's Budget Includes a $2 Trillion Math Mistake — time.com/…
President Trump's budget includes simple accounting error that adds up to a $2 trillion oversight.
Under the proposed budget released Tuesday, the Trump Administration's proposed tax cuts would boost economic growth enough to pay for $1.3 trillion in spending by 2027. But the tax cuts are also supposed to be revenue-neutral, meaning that trillion dollars is already supposed to pay for the money lost from the tax cuts.
Trump Budget Based on $2 Trillion Math Error — nymag.com/...
It seems difficult to imagine how this administration could figure out how to design and pass a tax cut that could pay for itself when Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush failed to come anywhere close to doing so. If there is a group of economic minds with the special genius to accomplish this historically unprecedented feat, it is probably not the fiscal minds who just made a $2 trillion basic arithmetic error.
Not even denying the double-counting -
We all pay taxes. It’s our money.
Democrats should be pounding on this budget for months to come — for both Dems and GOP voters — show how Trump and his cabal are defrauding this country to shower gifts upon their rich friends.
Did I mention that the budget includes selling of half of our strategic oil reserve, paid for by our tax dollars when prices were high and now to be sold when prices are low? All proceeds to benefit the rich.