The Wall Street Journal lambasted President Obama over a slight projected increase of the federal budget deficit in 2016 while praising budget-busting Republican tax plans that The Journal falsely claimed “would spur [economic] growth” enough to make up for revenue shortfalls.

On January 25, The Wall Street Journal used newly released figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to falsely claim the federal deficit was “climbing rapidly again” in President Obama's final year in office and to warn that future deficits would “take[] off” after the conclusion of his presidency. The Journal highlighted that the annual federal deficit is projected to increase from 2.5 percent of GDP in 2015 to 2.9 percent of GDP in 2016, blaming most of this growth on increased outlays to entitlement programs.

While The Journal blamed President Obama for creating a “fiscal time bomb” for his successor, the paper praised Republican tax plans claiming “the various tax reform plans that Republicans are offering would spur growth” (emphasis added):

Perhaps you've heard President Obama's talking point that the federal budget deficit has fallen by two-thirds on his watch. That overlooks that the deficit first soared on his watch, and then fell thanks largely to the GOP House and modest economic recovery, and that as he leaves office he is going to need one more asterisk: The deficit in 2016 has begun to rise again, in dollars and as a share of the economy. And after he leaves office, it takes off.

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As ever, the big spending drivers will be entitlements, which are projected to rise to 15% of the economy from the current 13.1% over 10 years. This is the fiscal time bomb that Mr. Obama will leave his successor, thank you very much.

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We realize such unhappy realities are not supposed to intrude on a presidential campaign, and the American public long ago dropped spending and deficits as major concerns. Voters care more about the economy and terrorism, and there's good sense to that. The deficit will never vanish without faster economic growth, and the various tax reform plans that Republicans are offering would spur growth. By all means let's debate growth.

The Journal's core claim, that “the deficit will never vanish without faster economic growth” is debatable, but its decision to endorse “the various tax reform plans that Republicans are offering” as a solution for both economic growth and deficit reduction is absurd.

According to tax policy scores from the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, all of the tax plans promoted by Republican presidential candidates would vastly increase the budget deficit:

According to this GOP-friendly analysis, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's proposals would reduce expected economic growth and job creation over the next decade but also reduce deficit-accumulation by $191 billion to $498 billion. At the same time, according to the Tax Foundation, GOP candidates would oversee stronger economies while vastly accelerating the growth of the federal deficit. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's tax plan could add as much as $12 trillion to the national debt on top of expected accumulation, while Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) plan only ends up reducing the deficit in a “dynamic revenue estimate” that Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has repeatedly derided as "voodoo economics."

Furthermore, The Journal's claim that faster economic growth resulting from tax cuts is what is needed to reduce the federal deficit is not backed up by sound economic research. On August 25, 2015, Republican-appointed CBO Director Keith Hall said “tax cuts do not pay for themselves,” and a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report withdrawn by GOP senators found that lower top income tax rates did not correlate with higher economic growth but did find it “associated with greater income disparities.” When economists created a model for creating a top tax rate that would be an “effective tool for social insurance,” they found raising rates on the top 1 percent of earners to 90 percent would be appropriate.

Right-wing media outlets repeatedly stoke fears of the federal deficit growing too large. Fox News and other right-wing media outlets are notorious for hyping the federal deficit and The Journal's editorial feeds into this narrative.