“I’m the king of debt,” former President Donald Trump once said. “I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.”
The nonprofit Committee for Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) agrees: In a new report, the nonpartisan group forecasted that Trump’s economic plan will push the United States $7.5 trillion deeper into debt in the next decade, more than double the $3.5 trillion that his rival Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan would add.
“Both the Republican and Democratic candidates for President have put forward campaign plans that would, at best, maintain the status quo and, at worst, add tremendously to our debt and deficits,” the CRFB wrote Monday.
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The report noted these estimates are marked by “a high degree of uncertainty” because both campaigns have avoided disclosing specifics about their plans for the American economy. Depending on various factors, the CRFB said, Harris’ policies could add between zero and $8.1 trillion to the debt, while Trump’s could add $1.5 trillion to $15.2 trillion.
In addition to being the self-proclaimed debt king, Trump also once said, “I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.”
On the campaign trail, he has promised tax cut after tax cut, including costly extensions to the 2017 tax cuts implemented while he was in office, plus an end to taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security.
Extending his Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA), the 2017 bill that made those cuts possible and which expires at the end of this year, will be the most expensive part of Trump’s plan, costing $5.4 trillion, according to the report.
Harris has pledged to extend the benefits of the TCJA to Americans earning less than $400,000, which would cost a considerably lower $3 trillion.
Meanwhile, Trump’s two vaunted silver bullets that he says will offset the astronomical price tag of his platform—tariffs on imports and allowing oil companies to drill on protected land—will bring in $3.7 trillion in government revenue over ten years. That’s less than the $4.3 trillion that Harris’ plan to raise taxes on corporations and those making more than $400,000 a year would bring in, according to the CRFB.
The added deficits of Trump and Harris’ plan would come on top of an estimated $22 trillion in budget deficits the U.S. is set to pile up in the next 10 years without action from Congress. The United States’ publicly held debt surpassed $35 trillion earlier this year.
An earlier report by the CRFB, released in June, also found that Trump ran up the national debt twice as much as President Joe Biden while in office.
“I understand money better than anybody,” Trump once said.
