Donald Trump Made a $3.7 Trillion Mistake In His Budget
What's an extra few trillion dollars in debt?
Don’t ever underestimate Donald Trump. When his team released its budget in May, it was off by $2 trillion thanks to ultra-rosy economic predictions and a bit of accounting magic that used the same pot of money twice—once to pay for a tax cut and once to reduce the deficit. Today, the Congressional Budget Office, which acts as an independent analyst for US lawmakers, released its analysis. It shows that Trump’s budget is actually even deeper in the hole: $3.7 trillion over the next 10 years:
That’s a huge disparity, representing a ton of additional borrowing by US taxpayers. Why is there such a big gap between what the White House delivered and the CBO’s forecast? Largely for the same reasons we explained in May: The tax cuts proposed by the administration would reduce revenue by more than $3 trillion, and the increased borrowing would result in higher interest payments. The CBO isn’t convinced that those tax cuts will generate much additional economic growth, either.
Essentially, that’s a picture of what borrowing to finance an enormous tax cut looks like. The White House didn’t want you to see it. (And just so you don’t think we’re picking on Trump, the last two budgets proposed under the Obama administration were $303 billion and $776 billion off from CBO’s forecasts.)
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