Like all Republican budget proposals, Trump's budget proposal for fiscal 2018 includes magic asterisks, but Trump's proposal is unique in that it counts their magic asterisks twice.
This has been widely reported as some kind of mistake or "math error," but Budget Director Mick Mulvaney now says it was intentional.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney didn't deny the math, saying it was done "on purpose," during a press briefing Tuesday.
"I'm aware of the criticisms and would simply come back and say there's other places where we were probably overly conservative in our accounting," he said. "We stand by the numbers."
In other words, counting $2 trillion in phantom revenue twice is okay because there's probably trillions more in revenue hiding in there somewhere, right?
That is exactly what he's saying.
Meanwhile, Mulvaney wrote an op-ed for the Post and Courier in his home state of South Carolina in which he describes social assistance programs as "theft" and "larceny."
For years, we’ve focused on how we can help Americans receive taxpayer-funded assistance. Under President Trump’s leadership, we’re now looking at how we can respect both those who require assistance and the taxpayers who fund that support. For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first.
Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft. This budget makes it clear that we will reverse this larceny.
Conservatism is a mental illness.