Trump’s Budget Assumes Reasonable GDP Growth, Liberals Go Ballistic

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

May 23 2017

 

President Trump’s first proposed budget was released today, to howls of outrage from the left. The New York Times issued an email breaking news alert:

 

 

The Times’s claim that Trump’s budget assumes “improbable economic growth” was mild compared to the reaction from most of the liberal commentariat. Slate, for example, initially headlined “The Trump budget forecasts 3 percent growth for 10 years, is insane,” but then backed off to “Trump’s Growth Forecasts Are the Budgetary Equivalent of Putting Your Fingers in Your Ears and Yelling, ‘Na Na Na Na Na.’”

Yes, Trump’s budget projects 3% annual GDP growth. That used to be considered the norm, with 4%, on average, the target. Now liberals think such budget assumptions are “insane,” or, more mildly, “improbable.”

 

 

(Snip)

 

Through the whole Obama administration, there was never a prediction of GDP growth as low as 3%–the level that liberals now deem “improbable” if not “insane.” In 2011, did the New York Times write that Obama’s budget projection of 6% GDP growth–exactly twice the prediction embodied in Trump’s proposed budget–was improbable? Just kidding.

With reasonable government policies, 3% growth is eminently obtainable. It is nowhere near what the Reagan administration achieved. Which is why the Democrats are determined to drive Trump out of office before his pro-growth policies (on repatriation, for example) can be implemented. A pro-growth administration would expose the Obama years for the economic fiasco that they were.