South Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Sanford ripped apart the Trump administration’s economic projections, saying a 3 percent growth rate is an unrealistic estimate.
At a House Budget Committee hearing Wednesday, in which Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney testified, Sanford said Trump’s GDP objectives set forth in the president’s budget released Tuesday “presume a Goldilocks economy,” adding he doesn’t see how the numbers add up.
“Can you guess the last time we had an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent, growth at 3 percent, and inflation held at 2 percent?” he asked Mulvaney, who didn’t answer. “It’s never happened.”
Citing unemployment numbers, growth and inflation rates in the budget proposal, Sanford broke down why he believes the projection are unrealistic.
“It’s not only a myth, it’s frankly a lie,” he said.
According to Sanford, they need to see real numbers to ensure they aren’t doing more damage than good, adding he believes it’s wrong to insinuate they can balance the budget without making some difficult choices.
“What’s incumbent upon us it to have a real debate about real numbers, and then we can have a food fight,” he told reporters. “But what you can’t do is go out and create a rosy picture that pretends we’re not going to have to make some hard choices in terms of entitlements in balancing the budget and find out what that budget does.”
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