Budget director: ‘Tax cuts do not pay for themselves’

The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), who was appointed by GOP lawmakers earlier this year, said Tuesday that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves.

At a press briefing, a reporter asked Keith Hall about that theory.

“No, the evidence is that tax cuts do not pay for themselves,” Hall said. “And our models that we’re doing, our macroeconomic effects, show that.”

{mosads}The briefing focused on a new report CBO released Tuesday detailing updated projections for the federal budget and economy over the next decade. 

The CBO projected that the deficit for 2015 will fall to an eight-year low of $426 billion, or 2.4 percent of gross domestic product. It lowered its earlier projections because of higher revenue from corporate and individual income taxes.

Some conservatives argue that cutting taxes leads to more economic growth, and thus higher tax revenue from job and wage growth.

The majority-GOP Congress is requiring the CBO to use “dynamic scoring,” which considers how a bill will affect the broader economy and how that might affect the federal budget. The CBO also uses the more traditional static scoring approach.

GOP lawmakers have argued that “dynamic scoring” would provide more accurate estimates. Hall said it does improve the quality of CBO’s scores, but he also warned that there is a lot of uncertainty involved.

Congressional Republicans decided earlier this year not to reappoint former CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, appointing Hall as his successor instead.