Team Trump ordered faked-up rosy economic forecasts
This is how a republic is undermined: have the underlings cook up lies. lies, lies.
As the White House staff tries to put together a budget for President Donald Trump, they face a fundamental problem. Trump has promised to cut taxes, increase spending on the military and infrastructure, and avoid cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The only way to do that without producing an exploding budget deficit is to assume a big increase in economic growth.
And Nick Timiraos at the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is planning to do just that — by making things up.
Deep into his story about Trump budget hijinks, Timiraos reveals that “what’s unusual about the administration’s forecasts isn’t just their relative optimism but also the process by which they were derived.” Specifically, what’s unusual about them is that they weren’t derived by any process at all. Instead of letting economists build a forecast, Trump’s budget was put together with “transition officials telling the CEA staff the growth targets that their budget would produce and asking them to backfill other estimates off those figures.”
Staff has been ordered to project that inflation-adjusted growth will average between 3 and 3.5 percent over the next decade, eventually settling at around 3.2 percent.
That’s drastically higher than the estimates provided by the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve, both of which see the economy growing at a bit less than 2 percent. The make-believe reasoning the administration is giving for this is that “a regulatory rollback and a tax-code revamp will unleash growth that drives a recovery in productivity, sends business investment higher and draws idled workers back to the labor force.”
It’s a variation on the ol’ “trickle down” scam. We’ve cut taxes on the rich again and again and again and again and again.
Has it ever stimulated the economy or benefitted working families? (Is that crickets I hear?)
‘Nuff said.
You can see the WSJ story here.
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Copyright 2017 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.
10 responses to Team Trump ordered faked-up rosy economic forecasts
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StoneyCurtisll February 18th, 2017 at 09:38
There is nothing that trump or his lackeys will not lie about anytime, anywhere or any how.
granpa.usthai February 18th, 2017 at 09:46
agreed.
LIAR trump and his LYING krew could damn near be a national convention of American xtian leaders.
granpa.usthai February 18th, 2017 at 09:45
trickle down on steroids someone once said.
typical lazyass deadbeat republican generated buffoonery from LIAR trump and his krew of LIARS.
the only difference, this time there’s the internet -with pretty much instant access to actual numbers, figures, and national economic conditions instead of having to wait on the republican owned MSM to filter the scamming down.
Mike February 18th, 2017 at 09:56
It’ll al come rushing down like it always does for republicans. The economy always does beter under democrats.
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker February 18th, 2017 at 10:22
Always!
And since the 60’s, that’s a fact.
Unfortunately republicans no longer deal with facts.
mea_mark February 18th, 2017 at 10:05
The only rosy economic news we are going to get is the the very temporary boost from some people feeling good about tRump now. The optimism of the ignorant and their boost to the economy will be over very quickly as reality settles in. Presidential mismanagement combined with a complicit congress is going to be a disaster. If tRump and the congress are still operating the way they are now, this summer, things are going to be getting pretty rough.
eyelashviper February 18th, 2017 at 11:19
The other side to this is that people just might run out and spend wildly, fearing the end times, or worse, from tRump’s insane policies, words, and actions.
robert February 18th, 2017 at 11:18
If all of this truth is in the WSJ we should be expecting to see a Jesse watters / bill O’Reilly team investigation on trump any day now No.. any second !
Gina Bousquet February 18th, 2017 at 13:14
The real fake news, the ones his team provides.
RandyBastard February 20th, 2017 at 11:29
Welcome to Kansas. This is EXACTLY what Brownback did with his budget projections and it has turned Kansas into the third-world.