Trump Needs To Force House GOP To Count The Money

House Republicans are squeezing Trump in negotiations over the reconciliation budget package. Some have even suggested that tax increases might be necessary to pay for his budget requests.

But Trump has proposed more than enough new revenue to offset any needed reductions and obviate the need for any new taxes. It's just that the sources of revenue aren't being counted as the House grapples with the budget. Why not? Likely because they are new and creative and the bureaucrats at the Congressional Budget Office — that scores the revenue proposals — are unused to such novel approaches.

Trump is proposing a uniform, base tariff of ten percent on all countries that want to export to America. Such a tariff would bring in $400 billion in new revenue. (Total American imports run about $4 trillion a year.) With that money, the rest of the budget would balance easily but the bean counters haven't taken notice and don't include it in their budget projections.

House Republicans have also approved a plan to let Trump sell massive amounts of federal land in Utah and Nevada, but the bean counters haven't factored that revenue into their budget projections.

Nor have the bean counters in the Congressional Budget Office even begun to come to grips with Trump's drug pricing reforms that specify that Medicare and Medicaid can pay no more for a drug than the lowest amount charged in any of the ten major western economies of the world.

The impact of Trump's "most favored nation" drug pricing reform on health care costs the government must pay is certain to be huge, but no allowance for it is included in the scoring that lays the basis for negotiations on the budget.

It's time for the folks at the Congressional Budget Office to wake up and pay attention to what the president says. There is no way income taxes need to be raised when these new revenue streams are included. And there is no way the House Republicans need to cut Medicaid benefits beyond eliminating waste and fraud.

Let's get real, people!