The reason is obvious. THEY couldnt get to anywhere near 4 growth with their Keynesian nonsense so they think nothing can get us there. Actually the free market can and will.
CNN Money recently asked leading economists about Trumps promise and they found a strong consensus that 4 growth is impossible or at least highly unlikely." Why? They say there arent enough workers with the retirement of the baby boomers and that automation means fewer jobs available. Productivity is apparently tapped out.
Even the latest 3 growth goal that Trumps Budget Team has projected was ridiculed.
"Experts" point to a widely cited 2016 San Francisco Fed study which argues that the new normal" is 1.5 to 1.75 GDP growth or less than half the post-World War II average pace of progress. Economists are sounding as myopic as the legendary patent office official who once proclaimed that everything that will be invented has been invented.
History is on Trumps side
In the 1960s after the Kennedy Tax Cuts were implemented the economy grew by 4.5 annually for about five years (1965-69) while unemployment sank to record lows and a gold-linked dollar held down inflation.
In the 1980s following the Reagan Tax Cut the economy from 1983-89 expanded at annual clip by 4. Back then economist Paul Samuelson a Nobel Prize Winner declared that if the Reagan agenda were to produce high growth in outcome and jobs with declining inflation it would be a miracle."
The miracle happened. So why not now?
Its worth noting that when Barack Obama unveiled his Keynesian stimulus plans the White House projected 3 plus rates of growth nearly every year. He never hit 3 growth in a single year.
I dont recall hearing the hoots of protest against his plans achieving impossible" rates of growth.
One bogus argument for the new normal of slow growth is that the labor force growth necessary for high growth will not happen. It is true that baby boomers are retiring at a pace of 10000 a day. But the notion that there isnt an available pool of workers to fill millions of new jobs from the tax cuts and deregulation is nonsense. There are a record 95 million Americans over the age of 65 out of the workforce today and a record low labor force participation rate. Yes many of these workers are over the age of 65 and retired. But the biggest reduction in workforce participation has been younger people.
Meanwhile many workers over the age of 50 have seen their jobs disappear and have resigned themselves to early retirement. We know that including the millions of Americans who have given up looking for work or cant find a full-time job would lead to an unemployment rate twice as high as officially reported.
We also know there are millions of Americans on disability or other welfare programs who arent working. This isnt because there are more disabled people or that more people need government benefits like food stamps. It is because the benefits are so much easier to get and thus welfare and disability have become costly substitutes for work.
Put time limits and work requirements on these programs for employable adults and the labor force will accelerate quickly. There are potentially tens of millions of workers who could and should be working but arent.
Also we can and should fix our Immigration System so many more engineers scientists and skilled workers can get visas to come to the U.S. and fill open jobs.
Then there is the issue of productivity
Federal Reserve vice chair Stanley Fischer declared last year that slow growth in capital investment and productivity" is the force thats holding down growth." No they arent. Investment has been low for the 
past decade because of liberal policies that punished capital investment. Higher capital gains and dividend taxes more onerous regulations Obamacare Dodd-Frank the massive increase in the national debt all have deterred investment.
The war against business under Obama hopefully will become a peace treaty with business under Trump. We know that there are hundreds of energy projects ready to go these are investments that Trump should greenlight in the months ahead.
Im of the belief that America is just entering a new stage of massive productivity gains as we enter the Digital Age Part II. Artificial intelligence and robotics could double or triple the productivity of American manufacturing. New drugs vaccines medical devices artificial limbs and medical procedures from our biotech industry will cure or alleviate cancer heart disease MS Alzheimers and many other debilitating illnesses that sap productivity.
We are entering a Golden Age of Productivity with undreamed of advances. We will produce more and more output with fewer and fewer workers needed.
We get there mostly by getting the government out of the way.
Trump wants to do that. And if he does 4 growth can and should be the new normal in America.
And the growth doves will eat their words!
Stephen Moore is an economic analyst with FreedomWorks as well as a Fox News analyst and American Spectator contributor. His latest book is Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy (Regnery).
