U.S. News By Ryan Alexander 6/1/2017
Last week was a big week for budget nerds in Washington. First, the president released his first full budget, which in turn led to testimony and press conferences by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. Days later, the Congressional Budget Office released the score of the revised American Health Care Act, or "Trumpcare," the bill that reforms the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." And Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress to raise the debt ceiling before its August recess, sooner than anticipated.
The connections between these three events are obvious in some ways since they are all major stories relating to the federal budget, but it is worth connecting the dots to fully understand the problems that these events highlight.
First, there's President Donald Trump's $4.1 trillion budget. The priorities identified in this budget are not surprising – significant increases in spending for border security and military operations, along with cuts to many programs then-candidate Trump vilified in the campaign.
The surprising, and troubling, things about this budget are its projections. The proposal supposedly balances the federal budget in 10 years, but this is based on the assumption of sustained 3 percent growth, which is 50 percent higher than the projections of 1.9 percent growth by the Congressional Budget Office, something few economists believe is likely. Moreover, the budget does not reflect the impact of the president's proposed tax cuts, which, coincidentally, also depend on 3 percent growth to pay for revenue lost by lowering rates. Even without the double counting, the underlying assumptions of this budget are not even close to fiscally realistic.
More:
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/articles/2017-06-01/congress-and-the-president-cant-rely-on-budget-gimmicks
