The Trump administration claims his tax cuts will pay for themselves. Only 5 percent of economists believe that.

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published 4 May 2017

President Trump has assured America that the government will not have to borrow more money to compensate for the huge tax cuts he's proposed, but economists aren't sold. A new survey by the University of Chicago found that 84 percent of economists do not believe the Trump administration's claim that the economic growth spurred by his tax cuts — alongside the elimination of some tax breaks — will make up the difference. Only 5 percent of economists said they thought Trump's tax cuts would indeed pay for themselves.

Trump has proposed cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and whittling the seven existing tax brackets down to three rates of 10, 25, and 35 percent. Trump's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has claimed the cuts "could increase the rate of economic growth from around 2 percent to as much as 3 percent a year," The Washington Post reported.

In another portion of the survey, economists were asked if any tax cuts made since 1980 have "ever paid for themselves in general," the Post noted. None said that they had. "Cutting taxes can stimulate growth, but typically not by enough to increase total revenue collected," Yale University economist Larry Samuelson wrote in the survey's comments section.