Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, said that the deficit is “coming down rapidly” in a Friday morning appearance on Fox Business.
The problem for President Trump’s top economic adviser is that the deficit is actually rising.
“As the economy gears up, more people working, better jobs and careers, those revenues come rolling in and the deficit, which was one of the other criticisms, is coming down,” Kudlow told host Maria Bartiromo. “It’s coming down rapidly. Growth solves a lot of problems.”
However, the deficit is actually increasing, and is projected to do so well into the future. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected as of April 2018 that the FY 2018 deficit is $804 billion. Fiscal Year 2017’s deficit was $666 billion, increasing from $586 billion in FY 2016. This leads to an even worse projection for the federal debt. The CBO concluded in a report earlier this week: “At 78 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly […]