The Department of the Treasury’s inspector general opened an inquiry on Thursday into the department’s own analysis of the Republican tax plan, Bloomberg reports.
Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin has repeatedly assured the public that the tax cuts laid out in the proposal will pay for themselves through economic growth, and that the department would release its own analysis of the tax plan showing as much.
But with a vote on the tax plan looming, a New York Times report released Thursday morning suggests the department’s Office of Tax Policy had conducted no such analysis. “An economist at the Office of Tax Analysis, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his job, said Treasury had not released a ‘dynamic’ analysis showing that the tax plan would be paid for with economic growth because one did not exist,” the Times reported.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) cited the Times report in a letter to Inspector General Eric Thorson Thursday morning, calling on him to investigate the matter. “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.
It’s not yet clear when the inquiry will be complete, and while Republicans are still making last-minute changes to the bill, senators are expected to vote on the tax plan in the next few hours.
