President Trump will still try to reduce the country’s federal deficit, according to White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow, despite the Office of Management and Budget projecting the negative budget number to pass $1 trillion in 2019.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kudlow said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday when asked whether Trump intended to decrease the deficit.
“Sometimes in the short run, in order to invest in the economy, lower tax rates do yield lower revenues,” Kudlow continued. “I reckon it will take us a year, maybe 18 months to start turning that around. It’s not unusual. I look at it as a good investment in America’s future prosperity and healthy economy.”
OMB released its midyear review earlier in July, in which the predicted deficit was revised to be $1.1 trillion in 2019 given spending and receipts legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump since February.
The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s official, nonpartisan group of budget experts, estimated in April that the deficit would fall just shy of the $1 trillion mark in 2019 before eclipsing that number in 2020.
