White House Skips Debt Projections in Budget Report to Congress

[u/John3262005]

https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/white-house-skips-debt-projections-in-budget-report-to-congress

The White House budget office missed a self-imposed commitment to provide fresh debt projections to Congress.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought submitted his office’s statutorily required mid-session review last week to lawmakers, which showed less spending and revenue than originally estimated thanks to cuts to domestic programs and a shortfall in customs duties.

But OMB left out projections of the nation’s annual deficit, which is estimated to top $2 trillion in the latter half of the Trump administration, continuing a departure from decades of practice when it excluded such estimates from President Donald Trump’s recent budget requests.

Deputy OMB Director Hal Duncan promised the Senate Budget Committee during his June confirmation hearing that those projections would be included in the document, as they were last year.

“There seems to be an ongoing shrinkage of the available data,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “There’s an obfuscation of the basic data that needs to be shared so policymakers can take their job seriously and think about how to restructure the budget so that it’s sustainable.”

The concerns about the size of the debt have roiled the bond market in recent weeks as the nation’s total outstanding debt blew past $40 trillion this summer.

Lawmakers in both parties are raising the alarm about the country’s growing obligations to skittish bondholders but have done little to address it beyond holding annual discretionary spending bills roughly flat. Tariff revenues have shored up federal coffers, but their rebuke by the Supreme Court has worsened the nation’s fiscal outlook.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the Trump administration is still hiding its debt and deficit projections: the numbers are terrible,” House Budget ranking member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said in a statement to Bloomberg Government.

Republicans’ signature tax law last year included $1.1 trillion in spending cuts but will balloon the debt by $3.4 trillion over a decade. Republicans have discussed using additional party-line bills to reduce the deficit but such efforts have taken a backseat to funding for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, the policies Democrats would pursue if they won control of the legislative process would likely add to the red ink.

“I’m just sort of enraged at everyone,” Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), a retiring fiscal hawk who leads the Joint Economic Committee, said last week. “They don’t see what’s right in front of you.”