WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a Tuesday briefing on the new FY2018 Trump Administration budget, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney drove home the importance of assuming three percent growth for the American economy.
The Director said that it should be considered normal, and he slammed the Obama Administration for assuming under two percent. In a three percent economy, those that don’t like their jobs can quit and get another, according to Mulvaney.
“The differences between two percent and three percent growth doesn’t sound like much,” said Mulvaney, who countered rather that it is a “tangible” difference.
The OMB Director made the case that in an American economy with three percent growth:
At three percent economic growth, in a healthy American economy, if you don’t like your job you can quit because you know you can go get another job. If you get laid off you know you can go off and start your own business. These are the opportunities that people have forgotten about and these are the things, the optimism in the country, the dynamism in the country that the President is so eager to push back and to bring back to the country. It’s what drives every one of our policies, especially when it comes to anything dealing with jobs and the economy.
He said that three percent growth should be considered “normal” — not “absurd” as his critics have alleged. The Director argued that the budget perhaps should have assumed a more aggressive 3.5 to four percent growth rate.
“If you are 30-years-old and you are watching this or you are sitting here, you have never had a job as an adult in a healthy American economy. It’s either been a recession or a slow, sluggish economy stumbling along at less than two percent growth,” said Mulvaney.
Mulvaney accused the previous administration of completely giving up on balancing the budget. He said that assuming a mere 1.9 percent growth rate, as that administration did toward the end, the budget would likely never balance. He added, “The 1.9 percent growth rates for the entire 10 year window that the CBO growth rates assumes … are something we simply reject.”
At one point during the briefing, Mulvaney said that “borrowing money” without intention of paying it back is not debt, it’s theft.
Mulvaney called the 1.9 growth rate estimate “a pessimistic look at what the potential for this country and what this country’s people is.” He reiterated that the Trump Administration rejects this pessimism.
Mulvaney said of the FY2018 Trump budget, “It begins to reduce the debt relative to the size of the economy year one.”
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.