February 13, 2018
Most newspapers try to reserve such editorializing for the opinion pages, but a NYT article on the Trump budget told readers:
“Yet for all of the talk of fiscal restraint, Mr. Trump’s budget also amounted to an institutional surrender to the free-spending ways of Capitol Hill, which Mr. Mulvaney said had surprised the president and prompted him to refrain from even bothering to advocate deficit reduction.”
This is far from the only issue with this piece. The headline tells readers that the budget would “[add] $7 trillion to deficits.” This is the cumulative deficit projected over the 10-year budget horizon. It should be described as the addition to the “debt.” The amount is equal to 21.4 percent of the end of period GDP.
There are some other items worth noting. My additions are in parentheses.
“The White House budget request would add $984 billion (have a deficit of 4.7 percent of GDP) to the federal deficit next year…”
“Last week, Mr. Trump signed a two-year bipartisan budget deal, struck by congressional leaders largely without his involvement, to boost both domestic and military spending by $300 billion (0.74 percent of GDP).”
“That law increases military spending by $195 billion (0.48 percent of GDP) over the next two years and nondefense spending by $131 billion (0.32 percent of GDP) over the same period. The White House is proposing $540 billion (2.6 percent of GDP) in nondefense spending for 2019 — $57 billion below the new spending cap set by Congress.”
“The plan contains at least $1.8 trillion (0.8 percent of GDP) in cuts to federal entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps.”
“The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s budget is a plan to devote $200 billion (0.09 percent of GDP) over the next decade in new spending to improve the country’s crumbling infrastructure, starting with $44.6 billion in 2019 (0.21 percent of GDP).”
“Mr. Trump’s plan would also allocate $13 billion in new spending to tackle opioid abuse through prevention, treatment and recovery support services as well as mental health programs.”
The $13 billion is a five year total which is equal to 0.00012 percent of projected GDP or 0.059 percent of the budget over this period.
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