35 of 37 economists said Trump was wrong. The other two misread the question.
President Trump's administration says his tax cut will pay for itself. It turns out it's really hard to find an economist who agrees. The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business regularly polls economists on controversial questions. In a survey the school published last week on Trump's tax plans, only two out of the 37 economists that responded said that the cuts would stimulate the economy enough to cancel out the effect on total tax revenue.
Those two economists now both say they made a mistake, and that they misunderstood the question. “I screwed up on that one,” said one of those two economists, Kenneth Judd, when asked about his response to Trump's tax claim. “I meant to say that this is a horrible idea, a bad idea — no chance in hell.” The other respondent who said that Trump's tax cuts would pay for themselves was Bengt Holmström of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who confirmed in an email to The Washington Post that he had also misread the question.
Besides Judd and Holmström, another 35 economists said that the tax cuts would not finance themselves, and five more did not answer the question. In total, there is not one economist in the Chicago poll who believes that Trump's cuts would pay for themselves, suggesting his administration might not be able to deliver on a crucial promise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/08/35-of-37-economists-said-trump-was-wrong-the-other-two-misread-the-question/
