The White House is considering another round of tax cuts, according to a story last Thursday by The Washington Post's Erica Werner, Josh Dawsey and Jeff Stein. This is a monstrously bad idea, but it's hardly a surprise. It displays U.S. President Trump's cavalier attitude toward budget deficits, as earlier reflected in his 2017 tax cut of $1.5 trillion over roughly a decade. Nothing in the October jobs report (an unemployment rate of 3.6 percentage, payroll jobs up 128,000) suggests that the labor market needs more stimulus.
What we have here is a glaring example of a political bribe — tax cuts — masquerading as economic policy. The economy is already near "full employment," with budget deficits of $12 trillion projected for the period of 2020-2029. Any Trump tax cut would simply add to the total.
To be fair, Democrats' various spending proposals — for expanded health care and free college — seem to treat present deficits as a fait accompli and build on top of them.