It’s time to put to rest any notion that President Trump’s signature tax cuts are paying for themselves. Anyone who says otherwise is lying with numbers.
A year after the $1.5 trillion tax-cut package took effect, economic growth has accelerated, just as Republicans promised it would when pushing the law through Congress. Growth appears likely to hit 3 percent for 2018, after adjusting for inflation, which is a full percentage point higher than the Congressional Budget Office forecast for the year in 2017. Not all of that increase is attributable to the tax cuts, but some of it is.
That’s good news for Republicans’ longstanding claim that cutting taxes would provide such an economic bump that additional tax revenue would flow in to make up for what was lost through lower tax rates.
But the bad news is that hasn’t happened. The additional tax revenue has yet to show up, even with stronger growth.
