On today’s BradCast, the Trump Administration introduces what economists — on both the Right and Left — are describing as a massive 2 trillion dollar accounting error (or, less generously, ‘fraudulent’ numbers) in their new budget proposal introduced today. And we get caught up on the latest late updates on yesterday’s Manchester Bombing and the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Team Trump. [Audio link follows below.]
As Trump continues his overseas trip, the White House released his Budget Policy plan in full, including some $1 trillion in cuts to social programs, billions of dollars of increases in defense spending and what they describe as deficit reduction measures over the next 10 years. The plan, if enacted, would deeply slash programs from Medicaid to Social Security Disability Insurance to food stamps to financial student aid to agricultural subsidies relied upon by an enormous number of Trump voters.
But, aside from those cruel cuts, as our guest today, former Obama Administration tax policy adviser Seth Hanlon explains, the budget includes a huge, $2 trillion accounting error. Actually, Hanlon described it last night in a Twitter rant as ‘[Bernie] Madoff-level accounting fraud…designed to fleece vulnerable people’. Others today, including conservative budget experts, also describe the gimmick Team Trump uses to hide the decline in revenue as fraudulent — or “impossible magic math” — in that it counts the same (questionable) claims for increased revenues from massive tax cuts twice! Once to pay for the $5.5 trillion in tax cuts themselves, and then again to pay for $2 trillion in revenue in the Trump budget.
As Hanlon details, it’s quite a trick! An impossible one, in fact, which he doesn’t believe to be an accident, describing it as a “$7.5 trillion lie.”
“In their budget,” he explains, “they just pretend that this $5.5 trillion in tax cuts does not exist. And then at the same time…they say that the economy is going to grow by a full percentage point every year, so the economy is going to grow by 3% a year…And because of that extra economic growth — and there’s not much basis to think there would be that growth — that brings in an additional $2 trillion of revenue. So they include that extra $2 trillion of revenue in their budget, while at the same time not including…the tax cuts that are supposedly producing that magic growth that results in the $2 trillion.”
Hanlon, now a Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress, previously served as special assistant to President Obama for economic policy at the White House National Economic Council, coordinating the Obama administration’s tax policy. He calls the Trump scheme “a deliberate decision simply to wave a wand and take the entire $5.5 trillion cost of the tax cuts out of the budget,” adding that he “can’t find anybody who actually defends it,” including so-called conservative deficit hawks. We also discuss the cruel nature of many of the cuts, despite its unlikeliness to get very far as written, even in the Republican controlled Congress.
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with details on the “slash and burn” environmental aspects of the budget plan and for some good news out of Switzerland. (We’ll take it!)
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[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_ManchesterBombing_CruelCuts_SethHanlonTrumpMadoffBudget_052317.mp3]
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The Trumpistas grew up singing the song “♪I’ve Got Sixpence♫†(to spend, to lend, and to take home), took it seriously, and think “double-entry bookkeeping†means keeping two sets of books.
As quoted in Real Clear Politics, this is Mick Mulvaney flogging the Trump Budget: ‘”We looked at this budget through the eyes of the people actually paying the bills,” he said. “Compassion has to be on both sides of this equation. Yes, you have to have compassion for folks who are receiving the federal funds, but also you have to have compassion for those who are paying it.”‘
If we are charitable, we may conclude that Mulvaney’s idea of “the people actually paying the bills” (presumably for social programs) are all a bunch of selfish and resentful Scrooges who would rather see fellow Americans starve in the streets and alleys of this nation than pay taxes that keep needy, disabled (including veterans), and elderly citizens alive and off the streets.
He must have a low opinion not just of those in need but also of those who pay taxes that are to be spent on helping others. It is interesting that no one takes THAT as an insult.
By the way – I pay taxes, and I am a homeowner in suburbia. I don’t perceive my vision as a taxpayer reflected in that budget. No one asked me if that budget is one that is constructed as if seen through the eyes of this taxpayer.
Lastly, it also worth noting that Mulvaney and his Freedom (to get sick while starving to death in the street) Caucus seem to see the taxpayers on the on hand and “the folks who are receiving the federal funds” on the other as not sustaining a big, fat Venn-Diagram style population overlap.
Yes, I pay taxes – and my severely disabled step-daughter receives federal support funding, as does my disabled elder brother and my retired mother.
The Trump budget not only lacks a heart – it also lacks a brain, one capable of simple logic and arithmetic.
Well writ, Mr. Pruden. Thank you.