This is pretty amazing. Donald Trump hasn’t actually done much of anything in the past five months except flap his jaws. But it’s been some pretty expensive flapping. CBO’s last projection of the federal deficit was released in January. Literally nothing has happened since then except for Trump shooting off his piehole every day and congressional Republicans demonstrating that they can’t control their own lunatics. But that’s been enough. CBO’s projection of the federal deficit over the next decade has already increased nearly a trillion dollars:
The deficit in 2017 alone is projected to be $134 billion higher than CBO estimated when Obama left office. Why? “One reason for the sharp rise in the deficit in 2017 is the slow growth in revenue collections through May and the slow growth expected for the rest of the year.” And why is revenue collection so slow? CBO doesn’t say, but here’s a good guess:
How much of the tax revenue shortfall is rich people making low estimated tax payments in hopes their taxes will be cut? All of it? https://t.co/XD39DdBldj
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) June 29, 2017
The one thing that Republicans have made clear is that they’re really, really committed to cutting taxes on the rich. And they’ll probably make the tax cuts retroactive too. So why not lowball your quarterly tax payments in hopes they come through? It’s probably a pretty good bet.
