


Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought on Wednesday pushed back on new analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluding President Trump’s massive tax and immigration bill could add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
Mr. Vought said the CBO’s analysis is flawed because it is based on current spending levels and does not take into account Mr. Trump’s proposed extension of his 2017 tax cuts will persist along with other cuts to government spending.
He said that the CBO analysis does not fully account for the economic growth that will be fueled by the tax cuts and other measures in the bill such as provisions that slash government spending.
“The CBO continues to use a baseline that is fundamentally skewed from the way of the real world,” Mr. Vought told reporters on a conference call. “They assume all spending will continue into eternity,” he said.
“It will improve the deficit. It will help us deal with debt. It has historical levels of savings,” he said.
In a report issued earlier Wednesday by CBO found that Mr. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which is making its way through the Senate, will cut taxes by $3.75 trillion, but also add $2.4 trillion to the deficit. It also estimated that the package would reduce federal spending by $1.3 trillion over that same period.
The CBO analysis comes at a critical moment. Mr. Trump wants Congress to have the final bill on his desk by July 4. However, some deficit hawks such as Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have raised concerns. They oppose a provision in the legislation that would raise the debt ceiling.
The House version of the bill included a $4 trillion debt ceiling hike, while the Senate’s budget blueprint contained a $5 trillion increase. Mr. Paul has called for removing the debt ceiling provision from the bill and voting on that issue separately.
For decades the CBO has served as the unofficial scorekeeper of legislation in Congress and its most recent analysis gives those lawmakers fresh ammunition for their arguments against the 1,000-page package.
Mr. Vought said the president won’t remove the debt ceiling hike because that would give Democrats leverage to block the rest of his agenda included in the bill.
“He thinks it’s very important that the debt extension be part of this bill,” he said of the president.
In the call, Mr. Vought accused the CBO of being myopic and focusing merely on the deficit.
“Certain watchdogs are policy agnostic, they do not care about the agenda of this administration nor do they care about the agenda of many of these conservatives that are fiscal hawks,” he said.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.