Editorial Board
Trump's Budget Misses the Mark
Its basic theme is clear, and mistaken: Deficits don't matter.
So much for fiscal arithmetic.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesEven by the standards of a discredited genre, President Donald Trump's budget for 2019 is hard to take seriously. Judging the plan not as a fiscal blueprint but as no more than a vague indication of Trump's fiscal thinking, the document is still objectionable.
The administration's plans are based on recklessly optimistic economic forecasts and proposals for spending cuts that few in Congress will pay attention to, much less vote for. Last week's bipartisan agreement to ramp up public borrowing this year and next rendered the projections out of date before they were even published -- notwithstanding a hastily drafted "addendum" that says it all fits together.