White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Monday sought to quell fears that the country’s longest government shutdown hurt the economy, saying that the damage would only be temporary.
Kudlow addressed the issue after the Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier in the day that the 35-day funding gap caused by a disagreement over President Trump’s southern border wall cost the economy $3 billion in permanently lost commerce. The agency also projected that gross domestic product growth would slow to 2.3 percent in 2019, down compared to last year’s 3.1 percent figure.
“We frequently disagree with CBO, with all respect,” Kudlow told reporters during a White House press briefing. “They’re doing the best job they can, I get that. I won’t acknowledge any of that right now. You know, in a $20 trillion economy, it’s awfully hard to make even the best guesstimates of those kinds of small fractions of numbers. That’s what you’re looking at here.”
He advised the journalists to reserve judgment until a GDP report is released in the coming weeks.
“As I’ve said many times, you have a whole bunch of very temporary factors, and now that the government is reopened, the switch goes right back on. There’s certainly no permanent damage to the economy,” Kudlow said.
He added, “I still think we’re on a 3 percent trend line growth rate. I am proud of that. I think that the program of lower tax rates, and regulatory roll back, and opening up energy, and so forth is working and continuing to work.”
The Trump administration and congressional Democrats have until Feb. 15 to broker a deal that will keep the government open when the current spending measure expires. A bipartisan committee of 17 House and Senate negotiators will meet Wednesday to begin discussions on Homeland Security funding for fiscal year 2019.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Sunday that he believed the lawmakers had “less than a 50/50” chance of agreeing on a framework of which he would approve.
[Also read: Tariffs from Trump’s trade wars are hurting the economy, budget office finds — but only barely]
