The unveiling of President Trump’s first budget and the initial congressional hearings on overhauling the tax code should have brought clarity to the administration’s top legislative priorities.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, testimony from Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers cast even darker shadows over a murky legislative process that has fallen well behind schedule. Their explanations of the budget and their tax plans in public seemed to generate more questions with almost every answer.

Here’s where things stand.

Mixed messages on math

The most confounding aspect of the White House budget was that it appeared to double count the effects of economic growth.

It appears to improperly use the economic expansion that it predicts its policies will produce to both pay for tax cuts and reduce the deficit.