White House to disclose budget plan that extends individual tax cuts: media

WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is expected to release the budget for the next fiscal year that will extend the Republican-driven tax cuts enacted in late 2017, US media reported Sunday.

The White House is proposing to continue individual tax cuts through 2035 at a cost of 1.4 trillion US dollars, and the budget plan will be unveiled Monday, the CNBC quoted a senior administration official as saying.

The fiscal 2021 budget, which runs from October this year through September next year, projects the deficit will hit 1 trillion dollars this fiscal year and remain at 200 billion dollars after a decade.

The tax overhaul rolled out in late 2017 includes corporate tax cuts, which are permanent, and individual tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2025.

Trump and Republicans have argued the tax cuts could boost corporate investment and hiring, while Democrats have insisted that the law fueled corporate buybacks and criticized it as a giveaway to the wealthy.

In his State of the Union address earlier this week, US President Donald Trump touted what he called "America's great economic success", saying his administration revived the US economy by slashing regulations, enacting tax cuts, and reaching "fair and reciprocal" trade deals.

Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate and The New York Times columnist, tweeted that the US economy is growing at the cost of a ballooning deficit. "Trump's deficitpalooza is giving the economy as much stimulus now as it was getting in 2012, when the unemployment rate was 8 percent," Krugman said.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog group, noted that Trump "failed to mention the federal debt at all" in his speech.

The president has signed into law "a series of new reckless unpaid-for spending increases and tax cuts" that will add 4.7 trillion dollars to projected debt through the end of the decade, MacGuineas said in a statement Wednesday.

"When it comes to deficit reduction, it is easy to talk the talk and harder to walk the walk -- but it appears the President plans to do neither," she said.