Former U.S. Treasury Secretary: Trump officials are making ‘made-up claims’ about the tax plan

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said Friday that the Trump administration is making up claims about the Republican tax plan.

Summers, who served as secretary under President Clinton and was an economic adviser to President Obama, said in an interview on Bloomberg television that treasury department officials were misleading the public.

“I hate to be in a position of using this word about our government,” Summers said. “When you have senior economic officials making claims that are made-up … it’s very hard to have a dialogue, and compromise, and get to a good place.”

Summers referenced treasury officials taking research studies with “embarrassing” conclusions down from the department’s website, and criticized the president’s plan as being unclear about who it would help.

{mosads}“I do believe that when you put something forth called ‘tax plan,’ it has to be described in a way where people can figure out what their taxes would be under it,” Summers said. “You need to present some data on who is going to be helped and who is going to be hurt. Those are sort of the norms of American political life, and we are operating outside those.”

Trump has pitched his tax reform plan as good for middle-class families and likely to boost the economy, but critics and lawmakers have said the plan will benefit the wealthy and exacerbate inequality.

The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that the proposed plan would add $2.2 trillion to the deficit.