A Freedom Caucus Republican says the foundation of the Trump budget is ‘a lie’
He called the assumption at odds with the historical record — pointing out that the current economic expansion of 94 months has already long outstripped the average American economic expansion: “But what you presume in this budget is not only will we not have a recession — though we’re in the third-longest economic expansion in history — but it’s going to keep going for another 214 months. It’s not only unprecedented; I would think that to be unreasonable.
.. “It would require either radically opening immigration or a radical change to demographics as we are having 10,000 baby boomers retiring each day,” Sanford said. “If you look at productivity growth, it would require numbers, again, that we haven’t seen since the golden days of 1958 to 1967 — in the final wave of electrification, consumer appliances and the completion of the highway system — to achieve what we’re seeing. Even if we went to 1990 numbers, we would only see one-quarter of what is necessary to achieve 3 percent growth.”
.. Mulvaney said. “We should stop and think how absurd that is to think that 3 percent growth in an American economy is to some people an absurd assumption. It used to be normal. Ten years ago it was normal. In fact, it’s been normal for the history of the country.”
.. Mulvaney added: “By the way, if you don’t, the budget will never balance. If you assume 1.9 percent growth, my guess is you’ll never see a balanced budget again. So we refuse to accept that that’s the new normal in this country.