Donald Trump Would Push Debt To Highest Level In U.S. History, Report Says

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

Via HuffPo

Donald Trump’s policy agenda would quickly push the national debt to its highest level in history, according to a new report.

The analysis, which the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published Sunday evening, represents one of the first serious efforts to assess how electing Trump or his chief rival for the presidency, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, might affect federal finances over time.

Rather than focusing on individual policy initiatives — like Trump’s call to abolish the estate tax, or Clinton’s pledge to help working parents pay for child care — this new analysis takes into account all of the candidates’ proposals to date, in order to assess how they would alter the federal budget and, ultimately, the amount of debt that the public holds.

It was not an easy task for the committee’s researchers, because Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, barely talks about policy. When he does, he’s frequently vague or inconsistent. But the few proposals that Trump has actually described publicly made it possible to construct a rough analysis and compare his agenda with the more detailed proposals from Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

The resulting contrast was stark. As the report demonstrates, the election doesn’t simply present Americans with a choice between a politician who disparages entire ethnic and religious groups and a politician who preaches the virtues of diversity. It also offers a choice between a candidate who’d create vast new deficits for the sake of some highly questionable tax cuts — and one proposing a more modest agenda of expanded government programs, with added revenue that would cover nearly all of their cost

The centerpiece of Trump’s agenda is a series of proposed tax cuts, including new breaks for businesses and reductions in individual rates, that past studies have shown would disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. The committee’s researchers, working from estimates by the (also nonpartisan) Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, determined that, taken together, the tax cuts would add something like $9.25 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years. (For these and other projections, committee researchers produced three separate estimates to generate a range of possibilities and then used the one in the middle for their main analysis.)

Other items on Trump’s agenda, including his promises to overhaul veteran services and repeal the Affordable Care Act, would add a few hundred billion dollars to that total. With no significant new revenues or spending cuts to offset these costs, and with the higher interest payments that so much new borrowing would require, the cumulative impact of Trump’s agenda would probably be around $11.5 trillion in additional federal debt over 10 years, the committee’s researchers found.

And it’s debt-to-GDP ratio where the impact of Trump’s agenda may be most arresting. According to the committee’s researchers, Trump’s agenda, if enacted, would push the ratio of federal debt to GDP from its current level of 75 percent all the way up to 127 percent.

Of course, Clinton would also add liabilities to the federal ledger. Specifically, she has proposed an array of new programs, including tax credits to offset out-of-pocket medical costs and new federal assistance with college tuition, that would significantly expand the size and scope of the federal government. All told, according to the committee’s analysis, Clinton’s agenda would have the federal government laying out an additional $1.4 trillion in new spending over the next decade.

But the amount of federal money Clinton would commit to these new programs is just a fraction of the amount of federal money that Trump would dump into his tax cuts. Many of Clinton’s proposals, including the ones that focus on early childhood, hold out the promise of much greater economic returns in the future. Last but not least, Clinton has actually called for raising taxes on the wealthy — and has identified enough specific increases to raise $1.25 trillion in revenue and offset most of her new spending initiatives.

The difference between [Clinton and Trump] is indeed stark,” Henry Aaron, a widely respected Brookings economist who did not work on the committee’s analysis, told The Huffington Post Sunday. “One candidate shows determination to, at least, keep debt under control. The other is utterly indifferent to it.”

 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

Trump talking out of his ass and Hillary being competent in forming reasonable solutions.

Shocking.

[venusfly 17,885]

thats what the **** ive been saying this entire time

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

3 hours ago, LG said:

thats what the **** ive been saying this entire time

Well it doesn't take a full blown analysis to get the gist of it but I can only post from other sources here 

[Goosey 3,017]

Look at the source first:

 

"The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is housed at the New America Foundation (NAF), a 501(c)(3) that receives considerable funding from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation."

 

Peter G. Peterson, born June 5, 1926, is a controversial Wall Street billionaire who uses his wealth to underwrite a diversity of organizations and PR campaigns to generate public support for slashing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, citing concerns over "unsustainable" federal budget deficits.

 

In the 1990s, CRFB formed a "Cost Containment Coalition" that objected to the Clinton Health Care reform proposals and any new taxes to pay for health care. CRFB's opposition was portrayed as a tough, principled stand, but years later, documents were revealed that showed the Tobacco Institute, a now defunct industry lobbying group, funding the coalition

 

More recently, CRFB and its Fix the Debt project have come under fire for fronting for firms pushing for a territorial tax system, a tax break for profits earned offshore and for fronting for defense industry firms anxious to avoid budget cuts 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

6 minutes ago, Goosey said:

Look at the source first:

If this proves anything it's that they are biased against Hillary.  

[Adakam 2]

Funny how most of the trumpeteers have avoided this information....

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

1 minute ago, Adakam said:

Funny how most of the trumpeteers have avoided this information....

They don't care.

They only care that Trump is a wild card and will tear down the establishment!

Too bad they're glossing over the fact that he'll need to replace it with something. I heard Fascism worked well for Italy.