Kudlow confronted over attacks on Obama deficit after rejecting CBO’s projections on Trump budget

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow defended the recently passed two-year budget that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says will increase the national debt and deficit even though in 2009 he attacked the Obama administration for doing the same thing.

CNN’s Erin Burnett played Kudlow a clip from 2009 where he criticizes an Obama budget for the deficits and debt it created.

“The families of America take a look at this budget and these humongous deficits and the doubling of the debt and so forth and the out of control spending … this is the most unbalanced fiscal story coming out of Washington, really in our history,” Kudlow said in 2009.

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Burnett pointed out that in 2009, CBO said the national debt would reach 68 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2019. Today, the CBO said that the national debt would reach 105 percent of GDP by the end of 2028.

Kudlow told Burnett that the Trump administration doesn’t believe the CBO’s projection that the GOP tax cuts and spending bill will increase the national debt.

He added that his issue with the Obama program was that “it was all spending,” mainly for welfare programs and social spending that he didn’t think would lead to growth.

When Burnett pushed back by saying that President Trump recently signed a spending bill that will sharply increase the deficit, Kudlow said that Trump’s spending bill was “nothing like the Obama stimulus package.”

“I’m not happy with the government as it is now. I think spending has got to come down,” Kudlow said. “As I’ve said, we need more limited government, much more modest government.”

Kudlow added that if Obama had had a growth program, “we would all be more prosperous today” and he wouldn’t have fretted about the deficit.