Thursday, December 21, 2017

Free to tell the truth now - or something closer to it

November: This tax plan will pay for itself.
In an interview on Friday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said that “we’re confident that the $1.5 trillion gap would be filled” by economic growth.

[...]

Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin insisted last week that the House bill would not add to the deficit, even after an analysis by the independent Tax Foundation, which uses a model that tends to find large growth effects from tax cuts, found that the bill would add $1 trillion to deficits over a decade.

“We believe that we’re going to be fine on that,” Mr. Ryan said. “We believe that when you look at other analysis, whether it’s going to be Treasury or the rest, that we’re right there in the sweet spot, with economic growth that gives us more revenue with where we need to be.”

  NYT
December: Nobody knows if this bill will pay for itself.
“Are you saying that the growth you’re going to get from this tax cut will equal the amount it would cost on the deficit side, so that it’s a wash?” Savannah Guthrie asked Ryan in an interview Wednesday.

“Nobody knows the answer to that question, because that’s in the future,” Ryan said. “But what we do know is that this will increase economic growth.”

  TPM
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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