Happy first birthday, GOP tax cuts.

Normally we don’t expect much of 1-year-olds. This kiddo’s parents, however, had high hopes — promises, you might say — for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: It would reduce deficits, supercharge the economy (and stocks and wages), and draw droves of grateful voters to the Republican Party.

So where do those promises stand?

The White House says things are working as planned. The numbers mostly suggest otherwise.

Consider the budgetary impact. Republicans said the bill would pay for itself, contra every independent forecaster. Congress’s official scorekeepers, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, initially pegged the 10-year cost at $1.5 trillion; later they raised that to about $1.9 trillion.

The actual numbers thus far don’t look so hot. Despite some initial bogus claims from the administration that the deficit was “coming down rapidly,” it’s on track to rise from $666 billion in 2017 to $970 billion this year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That puts it at about 4.6 percent of gross domestic product, virtually unprecedented in such strong economic conditions.


Usually, when the economy is doing well — and we’re not in a major war — tax revenue is strong, spending on programs such as food stamps and unemployment falls, and the budget gap narrows. In fact, the last time the unemployment rate hovered around 4 percent, we had a surplus.




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