BREAKING: Trump Budget Numbers Make No Sense

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Jon Chait says the Trump White House has made a $2 trillion mistake:

Trump has promised to enact “the biggest tax cut in history.” Trump’s administration has insisted, however, that the largest tax cut in history will not reduce revenue, because it will unleash growth….But then the budget assumes $2 trillion in higher revenue from growth in order to achieve balance after ten years. So the $2 trillion from higher growth is a double-count. It pays for the Trump cuts, and then it pays again for balancing the budget.

It’s true that the budget summary document includes a line item called “Effect of economic feedback” (in Table S-2) that comes to $2.062 trillion over ten years. Is that the same as the economic feedback that will pay for tax cuts? Who knows, really. It’s all just made-up nonsense anyway. But here’s an interesting thing. In the detailed projections, the Trump budget projects lower tax revenue than the final Obama budget:

What’s up with that? Does the Trump budget not include any economic feedback after all? But even if it doesn’t, why is their projection lower than Obama’s? Is it so they can use this lower number as a new baseline for comparison when they unveil their growth-exploding tax plan later in the year?

I know, I know: who cares? The Trump numbers are just random gibberish plucked from the sky. Still, you’d think they could at least make them agree from one spreadsheet to the next. Where’s the economic feedback in the tax revenue numbers?

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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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