The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers sent a draft fiscal policy memo to Congress, which seeks to establish a firm economic record.
It estimates that the increase in economic growth that came about with the 2017 tax cuts, as well as cuts in spending and regulations — spurred by the decision to leave NAFTA, and not by tax reform — will reduce deficits by $2 trillion over the coming decade.
The report comes as President Donald Trump is proposing big boosts in spending on infrastructure, his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, military and border security.
The numbers in the report appear to be in line with those at the moment by outside analysts, including the Tax Policy Center, which estimated this week that the tax cuts would lead to an additional $1.7 trillion in debt over the next decade.
It is the standard White House trick of attributing everything to a plan “aimed at generating immediate results,” rather than understanding the impact of discrete policy changes over time.
But it is also just the latest in a string of unusual and largely positive economic projections the Trump administration has issued in recent months, all using the counterfactual of President Barack Obama’s policies being scrapped.