Editorial Board
Trump's Budget Is a Waste of Everybody's Time
Budgets are often dead on arrival, but this one is something new.
Hardly.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump’s first budget is truly remarkable in its unseriousness. To see why, try for a moment to take it seriously.
The plan purports to be fiscally responsible, saying that the national debt will fall from 77 percent now to 60 percent in 2027. A worthy goal, to be sure. At the same time, it calls for tax cuts but no changes in spending on the two main entitlement programs, Medicare and (non-disability) Social Security. To square these ambitious pledges, the budget then needs either a close-to-impossible acceleration in economic growth, or an implausibly severe squeeze on most other kinds of spending.