CBO: GOP budget doesn’t balance books

WASHINGTON — A new government analysis of President Donald Trump’s budget plan says it wouldn’t come close to balancing the federal ledger as the White House has promised.

Thursday’s Congressional Budget Office report says that Trump’s budget would result in a $720 billion deficit at the end of 10 years instead of the slight surplus promised.

CBO said Trump’s budget would reduce the deficit by a total of $3.3 trillion over 10 years instead of the $5.6 trillion deficit cut promised by the White House. The nonpartisan scorekeeper estimated that deficits in each of the coming 10 years will exceed the $585 billion in red ink posted last year.

CBO says that Trump relied on far too optimistic predictions of economic growth, the chief reason his budget doesn’t balance as promised.

“Nearly all of that (deficit) difference arises because the administration projects higher revenue projections — stemming mainly from a projection of faster economic growth,” CBO said.

Trump’s budget predicts that the U.S. economy will soon ramp up to annual growth in gross domestic product of 3 percent; CBO’s long-term projections predict annual GDP growth averaging 1.9 percent.

“The CBO report shows that the president built his budget on fantasy projections,” said Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Trump’s May budget submission proposed politically unrealistic cuts to the social safety net for the poor and a swath of other domestic programs. Many were deemed dead on arrival and are being ignored by Republicans controlling Congress.

CBO also said that the Trump budget contained too little detail to accurately predict its effects on the economy. The White House promised that its economic projections will produce $2.1 trillion in deficit reduction, mostly by overhauling the tax code and reducing the burden regulations have on the economy. But Trump’s tax overhaul plan is so far so sketchy that it can fit on a single page.