Former CNBC host and top Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow went Trump-sized with his deficit lies on Fox News Business on Friday morning, claiming that the deficit is going down.
“The deficit — which was one of the other criticisms [of the GOP tax law] — is coming down, and it's coming down rapidly,” Kudlow said. “It's throwing up enormous amounts of new tax revenue.”
In reality, the deficit is tens of billions of dollars higher than it was last year at this time, and while the Congressional Budget Office has revised one long-term deficit estimate down somewhat, the big picture is that “The federal budget deficit, relative to the size of the economy, would grow substantially over the next several years, stabilize for a few years, and then grow again over the rest of the 30-year period.”
The traditional media likes to quibble about when it’s appropriate to say that Donald Trump or a member of his administration has lied. Maybe they don’t know their false statements are false, the logic goes. But in some cases, like this one, you have to hope they’re lying, because ignorance would be even worse.