The Washington bean counters just announced that the extension of the Trump tax cut will cost $4.5 trillion.

Are they on planet mars? So far the tax cut over the first six years has cost close to nothing in lost revenue. Tax collections for the fiscal year that just ended were a half-trillion-dollars higher than CBO predicted they would be WITHOUT the tax cut.

So where does this fictional $4.5 trillion “cost” come from?

The CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation. But these are the same geniuses who said that the Trump tax cut of 2017 would cost more than $2 trillion.  Whoops!

These are also the same people who said the inflation reduction act would cost almost nothing and its actual price tag is now likely to exceed a trillion dollars.

We are basing future tax policy on a bunch of fake numbers.

Good news. A handful of conservative Senators agree with us at UP that the we should redefine how we score these tax bills. When Republicans take control of the House and Senate in January they need to fix the scoring process. If they don’t, they are putting their pro-growth economic agenda at risk.