Trump Is Already Cooking The Books

We all knew it would happen, we just didn't think it would happen from day one. Trump is now ordering the government economists to create fake economic reports that will make Trump look good and allow for greater tax cuts. I'm sure this is just the kind of "cooking the books' that is normal in the Trump Organization so it should work just fine in government.

Vox reports that Trump transition officials essentially gave the parameters of a growth rate of between 3 and 3.5 percent along with the assumption that interest rates would stay low to the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers and told them to back-fill the details accordingly. This is not just tweaking some assumptions to make the economic forecast rosier. It is determining exactly what the economic forecast should be and then adjusting the underlying details accordingly.

The effect of this make-believe "forecast" is to make the GDP look about 17% higher than traditional estimates 10 years from now. Both the Fed and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) believe growth will remain around 2% per year and interest rates will rise. The fake forecast is a nice feature for Trump because it allows for greater tax cuts and increased spending on the military without increasing the federal deficit as a share of GDP. It's funny how that worked out.

The Vox article seems to think that this will be a problem for the GOP in Congress as they are forced to rely on the CBO estimates. But I think that vastly underestimates the cowardice and cravenness of today's GOP, especially when tax cuts hang in the balance.