Report: Trump transition ordered government economists to cook up rosy growth forecasts

[kpete]

Link to tweet

As the White House staff tries to put together a budget for President Donald Trump, they face a fundamental problem. Trump has promised to cut taxes, increase spending on the military and infrastructure, and avoid cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The only way to do that without producing an exploding budget deficit is to assume a big increase in economic growth.

And Nick Timiraos at the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is planning to do just that — by making things up.

Deep into his story about Trump budget hijinks, Timiraos reveals that “what’s unusual about the administration’s forecasts isn’t just their relative optimism but also the process by which they were derived.” Specifically, what’s unusual about them is that they weren’t derived by any process at all. Instead of letting economists build a forecast, Trump’s budget was put together with “transition officials telling the CEA staff the growth targets that their budget would produce and asking them to backfill other estimates off those figures.”


http://www.vox.com/2017/2/17/14651208/trump-budget-forecast

[BeckyDem]

1. House of cards.

[Cracklin Charlie]

10. Built on shifting sand.

[dalton99a]

2. A government of alternative facts and data.

[uponit7771]

3. This will be the real shit comes down to; the economy... once it turns bad he's going to lash out

... violently

[Victor_c3]

4. When I was studying chemistry in college I used his technique

I used the "make your data reflect your results" technique for numerous lab write ups. I'm glad to see that my shady technique is used by our top executive!

I knew what the answer was supposed to be so I would fudge my data to make it work.

I wonder if that was taught at trump university?

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Repeat of Reagan

Pump and Dump tactics. Larry Kudlow will be the point man again with this disinformation campaign? Sounds like his work.

[Lindsay]

6. Great. Our government is now

a Ponzi scheme.

[Achilleaze]

7. When the republican DraftDodger-in-Chief & cronies have completed THE PURGE

of honest civil servants, we will never get so much as another speck of truth from the godforsaken apostate KGOP, Inc.

The republicans are systematically pissing on the teachings of Jesus and The Bible, the very things they claim are sacred to them. N.B.

[NewJeffCT]

8. Pyramid scheme

Didn't the DeVos family make their fortune that way with AMWAY?

[IdiotsforPalin]

9. Great....

We have a Fake President, why not a fake budget