Trump team didn't make a $2 trillion mistake on the budget—it engaged in massive accounting fraud

Rss@dailykos.com (mark Sumner) · Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 1:06 pm

A couple trillion here, a couple trillion there. No matter how many times Trump's budget team tries to reuse the same fake money, that doesn’t make it real.

President Donald Trump's newly unveiled budget contains a massive accounting error that uses the same money twice for two different purposes. Based on its supersized projections of 3 percent GDP, the president's budget forecasts about $2 trillion in extra federal revenue growth over the next 10 years, which it then uses to pay for Trump's "biggest tax cut in history."

Actually, since the whole idea that Trump’s currently unformulated tax cut is going to generate an extra $2 trillion is complete hokum, why not let Trump use it twice? Why not use it four times? Why not 10? Why … Donald Trump’s budget eliminates the national debt in six weeks, plus it will help you drop 20 pounds and eliminate crepey elbow skin!

The whole purpose of the entirely intentional accounting “mistake” is that it allows Trump to maintain the pretense that he can throw ridiculous sums at the military, cut even more monstrous refund checks for the wealthy, and still “balance the budget.”

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney didn't deny the math, saying it was done "on purpose," during a press briefing Tuesday.

There’s an obscure accounting term used when you don’t report the correct numbers on purpose—it’s called fraud.

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