Larry Kudlow's virtual realityPresident Trump's chief economic adviser has been making the rounds on TV with a shiny new talking point. Kudlow says the president's tax cuts are...
| |  | | Democracy Dies in Darkness | | | | | | | | | | The truth behind the rhetoric | | | | | | Larry Kudlow's virtual reality President Trump's chief economic adviser has been making the rounds on TV with a shiny new talking point. Kudlow says the president's tax cuts are "virtually paid for" when considering updated economic numbers. He's citing a Feb. 28 analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But he's getting it all wrong. On CNBC and PBS, Kudlow said a new economic forecast by the CBO shows that 80 percent of the tax cuts' cost will be paid for over 10 years. The CBO did revise upward by $7 trillion its nominal GDP forecast for the 2017 to 2027 period. But it specifically said that only $2.33 trillion of that was tied to the economic effects of the tax cuts. The rest comes from a series of changes that are not tied to the tax reductions. Kudlow deceptively took the overall $7 trillion figure to make his point. In the same report, the CBO said the increased economic activity sparked by the tax cuts would offset only 20 percent of the growth they would cause in the deficit (that's a far cry from 80 percent). Kudlow blew past all these careful distinctions and earned Four Pinocchios. |  | | Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here, for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out. | | AOC's misleading comparison between the wall and opioid emergencies On one hand, Trump has declared a national emergency to build a border wall. On the other, the president has declared an emergency on the deadly opioid epidemic. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wondered on Twitter why Trump had transferred tens of millions of dollars for the wall but $0 for the opioid crisis. At a House committee hearing, Ocasio-Cortez focused on the Public Health Emergency Fund — according to the Government Accountability Office, the fund has just $57,000 in it — and whether the declaration of a public health crisis regarding opioids should have triggered a transfer of money from other agencies. This is a highly misleading comparison worth Three Pinocchios. Congress has refused to fund the wall. But it approved $6 billion for the opioid crisis after Trump's emergency declaration. That money may not be in the Public Health Emergency Fund, but it's nonetheless devoted to the opioid emergency. | | | The Fact Checker, Season 2 Video is a huge part of what we do at The Fact Checker, and we're redoubling our efforts to reach as many people as possible. Introducing ... The Fact Checker, Season 2. Hosted by Meg Kelly, we will be offering detailed video fact-checks, dissecting everything from political rhetoric to deceptively edited videos to high-tech propaganda. Check us out on YouTube. For our first installment, here's Meg piercing through Trump's rhetoric on having "defeated" ISIS. Spoiler alert: They've lost all their territory, but they're still lurking about. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. | | | Recommended for you | | |  | | | Get The Trailer newsletter | | News and insight on political campaigns around the country, from David Weigel. 435 districts. 50 states. Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings. | | Sign Up » | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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