Trump Budget Based on $2 Trillion Math Error

[workinclasszero]

Trump Budget Based on $2 Trillion Math Error
By Jonathan Chait May 23, 2017 9:31 am

One of the ways Donald Trump’s budget claims to balance the budget over a decade, without cutting defense or retirement spending, is to assume a $2 trillion increase in revenue through economic growth. This is the magic of the still-to-be-designed Trump tax cuts. But wait — if you recall, the magic of the Trump tax cuts is also supposed to pay for the Trump tax cuts. So the $2 trillion is a double-counting error.

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. That is itself a wildly fanciful assumption.

It seems difficult to imagine how this administration could figure out how to design and pass a tax cut that could pay for itself when Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush failed to come anywhere close to doing so. If there is a group of economic minds with the special genius to accomplish this historically unprecedented feat, it is probably not the fiscal minds who just made a $2 trillion basic arithmetic error.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-budget-based-on-usd2-trillion-math-error.html

[underpants]

1. Larry Summers says the same

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029105662#post1

By Lawrence H. Summers May 23 at 5:00 AM

Details of President Trump’s first budget have now been released. Much can and will be said about the dire social consequences of what is in it and the ludicrously optimistic economic assumptions it embodies. My observation is that there appears to be a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course.


Then the administration asserts that it will propose revenue neutral tax cuts with the revenue neutrality coming in part because the tax cuts stimulate growth! **This is an elementary double count.** You can’t use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue. At least you cannot do so in a world of logic.

The Trump team prides itself on its business background. This error is akin to buying a company assuming that you can make investments that will raise profits, but then, in calculating the increased profits, counting the higher revenue while failing to account for the fact that the investments would actually cost some money to make. The revenue generated by the investments might exceed their cost (though the same is almost never true of tax cuts), but that doesn’t change the fact that the investment has a cost that must be included in the accounting.

This is a mistake no serious business person would make. It appears to be the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.

[workinclasszero]

3. But cutting taxes to the bone worked so well in Kansas under Republican Brownback

Oh wait.....



Republicans’ ‘real-live experiment’ with Kansas’s economy survives a revolt from their own party
By Max Ehrenfreund February 22

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s ambitious tax overhaul — which slashed taxes for businesses and affluent households, leading to years of budget shortfalls — narrowly survived a mutiny Wednesday afternoon when about half of Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in an effort to overturn it.

Brownback, a Republican who once called his tax policy a “real-live experiment” with conservative principles, had vetoed a bill that would have repealed the most important provisions of his overhaul.

The state is facing a $350 million budget shortfall. Brownback’s critics say the state’s persistent deficits are evidence that the economic benefits from reduced taxes are not always adequate to make up for reductions in revenue, as advocates of supply-side changes have sometimes claimed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/republicans-real-live-experiment-with-kansass-economy-survives-a-revolt-from-their-own-party/

[underpants]

4. But they didn't do it ENOUGH!!

So their whacked propaganda says

[workinclasszero]

6. Right...that's always their answer

But even half of the republicans in Kansas are tired of drinking the kool-aid on that trickle down horseshit now.

Twitler and the national republican party want to afflict the whole damn country with that proven FAIL tax cuts for the rich/brickbats for the poor economy now.

[Tanuki]

2. Calling deliberate fraud and deception an "error" is aiding and abetting.

[BSdetect]

5. Its magical economics that can fool the ignorant

I expect a tirade of drumpsters who will claim that it is the work of a genius.

Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Those who are trickled down upon should realize by ow that they vote for their own sad fate.

[LOL Lib]

7. Sounds like the con is sprinkling fairy dust on the books.

I expect no less from the leader of the party of stupid, gullible voters. They will buy it and lap it up.

[Gothmog]

8. They do not teach math at Trump U

[JHB]

9. Repeat: It's not an error, it's a deliberate, deceptive omission...

They want a document they can wave around saying they deliver on their horseshit promises (and when they don't work it'll be the Democrats' fault).

Reality has nothing to do with it any more than it has to do with any Republican (not just Trump) promise.

[Wounded Bear]

10. It's not a bug, it's a feature...nt

[imanamerican63]

11. I bet they can't an easer that big for that error?

[iluvtennis]

12. House Speaker Ryan: Trump's budget is 'right on the target' - what an asswipe Ryan is

Link to tweet

[workinclasszero]

13. He's an evil bastard

If he rams through Trumps Contract on the old, sick and poor they will kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. Many more than isis that's for damn sure!

[iluvtennis]

14. Rev William Barber - Trump budget is sick vision of those who despise the poor.

Link to tweet