The Whitewater Community Development Authority’s press releases flacking a part of the Trump tax bill for Whitewater show only that they either don’t understand what the Trump bill means for America, or that they hope others won’t understand. (See press release 1, press release 2.)
This bill will drive the federal budget deficit to astonishing and dangerous levels.
Jim Tankersley explains How the Trump Tax Cut Is Helping to Push the Federal Deficit to $1 Trillion:
The Trump administration had said that the tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating increased revenue from faster economic growth, but the White House has acknowledged in recent weeks that the deficit is growing faster than it had expected. The Office of Management and Budget said this month that it had revised its forecasts from earlier this year to account for nearly $1 trillion of additional debt over the next decade — on average, almost $100 billion more a year in deficits.
….
As the tax bill was debated last year, the Trump administration argued that losses from the cuts would be offset by increased economic growth. Companies would use money that had previously gone to taxes, the argument went, to invest in their businesses and workers, giving the government a smaller slice — but out of a bigger pie.
But the drop in tax payments has come as the American economy is already the healthiest it has been since the crisis, raising questions about whether the deficit could balloon further if growth begins to slow. The Commerce Department on Friday will announce its first estimate of gross domestic product in the second quarter, and forecasters anticipate it could reach 5 percent, the highest rate since 2014. Analysts, however, expect growth to slow in the second half of the year, as interest rates continue to rise and trade tensions weigh on the economy.
Whitewater won’t benefit from America’s detriment. The last generation of policymakers in Whitewater – such as they have been, at the CDA and in other offices – have pushed all manner of wasteful spending:
A bridge to nowhere, an ‘Innovation Center’ that’s a dull office building built on grants for another purpose (now used mostly for public-sector workers), a failed tax incremental district, an unused (now defunct) ‘innovation express’ bus line, crowing about taxpayer-funded state capitalism at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, an unsound, but twice-proposed digester energy project, and flacking for mediocre & mendacious insiders: that’s not a fit legacy for a serious, competent policymaking. (A best business citizen designation from the WEDC is the state’s way of saying least-competent grasp of simple economics.)
Long before Trumpism’s grip on the federal government, local boosters and self-described ‘development professionals’ were hawking big projects and dodgy data: bad ideas and bad analysis, combined. (Indeed, they have needed a lesser analysis to justify lesser projects.)
This lesser approach – from countless towns – was a key part of that which paved the way to our present national affliction.
Previously: About that Trump Tax Plan, On the Whitewater CDA’s Press Release (A Picture Reply Is Worth a Thousand Words, A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA, More About that Trump Tax Bill, The Trump Tax Bill: That’s Not Reform, and The Trump Tax Bill: The Wrong Incentives.