The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report last week that said the deficit will reach at least $1 trillion in fiscal 2019 due to a combination of the GOP's tax cuts and increased spending approved by Congress.
In other words, the tax cut won't pay for itself.
Now, no one has really disputed the CBO's findings and Speaker Paul Ryan himself did not say the CBO is wrong even if he did duck blame for the deficit, but Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared on Fox & Friends this morning where he attacked the CBO's report and said you should "never believe" the CBO.
“Never believe the CBO. Very important: Never believe them,” Larry Kudlow said on “Fox & Friends” when asked about the nonpartisan analysis of the tax law. “They’re always wrong, especially with regard to tax cuts, which they never score properly.”
“The CBO people are professionals. This is not a personal attack,” he added. “But their record on tax cuts is not good.”
You might say the only way to properly score a tax cut is with a magic asterisk, but wait -- the CBO has done that!
Even if you include magic asterisks, the GOP's tax cut is not expected to pay for itself or anything close to it. Moreover, the CBO's estimate is actually quite generous in that it expects the GOP's tax cuts will contribute to 0.5 percent in economy growth this year.
Other estimates have been far more dire. You may recall that Harvard economists calculated that tax cuts will contribute to an average of just 0.04 percent economic growth per year over the next ten years.
If you're reading this you're probably already aware, but taxes will not be "easier to file next year." You won't be filing on a postcard, or whatever. If anything, the GOP's rushed tax cut bill has complicated everything. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) still haven't even decided how it will implement and apply broad swaths of new language next year.
"The Bush Boom continues." -- Larry Kudlow in December 2007, the same month the Great Recession began.
CBO director Keith Hall is a Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed by Speaker Paul Ryan, by the way.