by I didn’t think they could shock me. Then I read that the Trump OMB made a ,000,000,000,000 arithmetic mistake Jon Chait explains “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 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 trillion is a double-counting error.” Amazing, I thought. Also Chait is much better at snark even than Paul Krugman who made it sound boring “@paulkrugman It appears that Trump budget involves two scoops of voodoo economics: faster growth *and* tax cuts
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I didn’t think they could shock me. Then I read that the Trump OMB made a $2,000,000,000,000 arithmetic mistake
Jon Chait explains “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.”
Amazing, I thought. Also Chait is much better at snark even than Paul Krugman who made it sound boring “@paulkrugman
It appears that Trump budget involves two scoops of voodoo economics: faster growth *and* tax cuts without a fall in revenue as % of GDP”
But I was wrong. Chait and Krugman are discussing two different errors (3 scoops of voodoo). Mulvaney et al both counted 2.1 trillion twice *and* assumed tax cuts don’t cause any reduction in the ratio of tax revenues to GDP.
Binyamin Applebaum explains.
One example of the budget-ledger legerdemain: Mr. Trump has pledged to end estate taxation. His budget, however, projects that the government will collect more than $300 billion in estate taxes over the next decade. Indeed, the Trump administration projects higher estate tax revenue than the Obama administration did because it expects faster economic growth.
Mr. Trump, in other words, is proposing to balance the federal budget in part by simultaneously increasing estate taxation and eliminating estate taxation.
Then later and separately explains another error.
The budget’s presentation of the benefits of the administration’s economic policies also raised questions. White House officials said that tax cuts and other changes, like reductions in regulation, would push annual economic growth to 3 percent by 2020, well above the 2 percent annual average since the recession. The budget projects that the increase in economic growth will produce $2.1 trillion in additional federal revenue.
The Trump administration appears to be counting this windfall twice. It needs the money to offset the cost of the tax cuts, but in the budget, the $2.1 trillion is also recorded as a separate line item above and beyond the steady growth of tax revenues.
They are into deep Voodoo.
See also Larry Summers