White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett dismissed experts' dire predictions about President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill by insisting that "truth" and "science" were not the same as democracy.
"There's a consensus that this bill adds tremendously to the deficit. I know that you are so familiar with these numbers," CBS host Weijia Jiang told Hassett in a Sunday interview. "The Yale Budget Lab estimates it will add $3 trillion to the debt. The Tax Foundation says $3 trillion. This tax portion of the bill could also add $3 trillion to the deficit."
"Help me understand why there is such a drastic difference between your number and all those others," the host prompted.
"Well, first of all, let's remember that science is not democracy," Hassett replied. "Truth is not democracy."
"Our estimates are based on modeling that we used last time when I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to say what would happen if we had a bill, how much growth we would get," he continued. "We run the same models through this tax bill. It's even better."
"I don't think that these places have a very strong record. And what they need to do is get back to the basics of looking at macroeconomic models."
