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President Trump's Budget Includes a $2 Trillion Math Error (time.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the math-mistake dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TIME: President Trump's budget includes a simple accounting error that adds up to a $2 trillion oversight. Under the proposed budget released Tuesday, the Trump Administration's proposed tax cuts would boost economic growth enough to pay for $1.3 trillion in spending by 2027. But the tax cuts are also supposed to be revenue-neutral, meaning that trillion dollars is already supposed to pay for the money lost from the tax cuts. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the oversight an "elementary double count" and "a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course" in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

10 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not an error. A lie. by spun · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hanlon's Razor applies here. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  2. Details, details. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    You guys are so picky, c'mon. Math is hard.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Details, details. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Nobody knew Math could be so complicated folks, nobody, believe me"

  3. Alternative Math by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is all just part of Trump's Alternative Math program.

  4. Re:Not an error. A lie. by Rei · · Score: 4, Funny

    Calm down, people, we don't want a fight here. Let's put aside our differences and try for the possibility of lasting peach on this site.

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    You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
  5. Re:Not an error. A lie. by infolation · · Score: 5, Funny
    it's neither malice nor stupidity, it's hyperbole.

    TRUMP: We're gonna have the biggest math errors! Way better and bigger errors than the democrats!! Nobody makes math errors better than me, believe me. No one's every had more than a trillion dollar math error. They said it couldn't be done. I'm really smart - I went to the Wharton School of Finance. We're gonna have errors more than, more, er, than TWO TRILLION DOLLARS!

  6. Re:Not an error. A lie. by Rei · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can't you people leave him alone for a single day? He finished up his orb business, then left the middle east to arrive at Israel, had a great time at the Holocaust museum and randomly decided to confess to outing an Israeli spy in front of Netanyahu - but all you people can do is make fun of his tiny, tiny hands.

    --
    You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
  7. Re:Not an error. A lie. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I really think we should give peas a chance.

  8. Re:Not an error. A lie. by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's not a filler-filled pile, it's just full of fiber*.

    (*) warning, may contain nuts.

  9. Re:This is not the president you need, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    these are the trolls you deserve though