The Treasury Department's inspector general is now on the hunt for Steven Mnuchin's missing tax plan analysis

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published 1 December 2017

The Treasury Department's inspector general is looking into whether politics is preventing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from releasing an analysis of the Republican tax proposal.

Mnuchin has said that under the GOP proposal, there would be so much economic growth it would pay for all the tax cuts, and he promised to be transparent, releasing a Treasury Department analysis of the bill. His message is at odds with an analysis released Thursday by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which found that over the next decade, the proposed bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $1 trillion, with growth factored in.

In a letter sent to inspector general Eric Thorson's office Thursday requesting an inquiry, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked why Mnuchin's promised analysis hasn't been released to Congress or the public. "Either the Treasury Department has used extensive taxpayer funds to conduct economic analyses that it refuses to release because those analyses would contradict the treasury secretary's claims, or Secretary Mnuchin has grossly misled the public about the extent of the Treasury Department's analysis," she wrote. Rich Delmar, counsel to the inspector general, told Bloomberg the inquiry is "a top priority."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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