Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appeared on CNN yesterday morning where he made the fantastical claim that the deficit-financed tax cuts his chamber just voted to advance will actually be "revenue neutral."
McConnell's Senate caucus just voted to pass a budget resolution for fiscal 2018 that creates procedural space to pass $1.5 trillion in deficit -financed tax cuts, but that doesn't account for the economic growth that will trickle down into the treasury's coffers, McConnell says.
The Trump administration’s tax plan promises up to $6 trillion in tax cuts but will increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if it abandons the revenue-neutral goal, McConnell said: “No, actually we’re not because that’s a rather conservative estimate of how much growth you’ll get out of this pro-growth tax reform.”
Not only is this thing that has never happened going to happen this time, McConnell says, it's going to happen even more than it never did before.
You know, it's not as if $1.5 trillion in growth translates directly to $1.5 trillion in revenue for the United States Treasury. The idea that economic gains on Wall Street somehow reduce our deficit or debt is just as stupid when McConnell says it as it is when Trump says it.
Even if that were the case, after you account for the GOP's tax cuts $1.5 trillion would be reduced to about $300 billion in revenue assuming a 20 percent corporate tax rate that doesn't even apply to vast sums of accrued wealth and growth. $300 billion would be a very generous estimation.
In so many words I'm saying Mitch McConnell is a really bad liar who doesn't believe his own bullshit.