Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are rolling out ever-growing lists of promises to voters — from making housing and health care more affordable to supporting manufacturers to providing tax relief to millions of Americans.
But those proposals come with hefty price tags, and the candidates have not laid out how they would fully cover the costs, a new analysis has found. As a result, the national debt would soar by trillions of dollars more regardless of who wins the election, further compounding the country’s fiscal problems.
Harris’ plan would boost the debt by $3.5 trillion over the next decade, while Trump’s platform would cause it to spike by $7.5 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s report, released Monday.
The watchdog group’s analysis is the latest in a series of reviews of the candidates’ plans, which generally find that Trump’s proposals would have a bigger impact on the national debt than Harris.’ The committee notes that its estimates contain a wide range of uncertainty and include many assumptions since neither candidate has issued detailed proposals. Its analysis draws on official campaign announcements and websites, white papers, social media posts, speeches, discussions with campaign staff, similar proposals in presidents’ budgets and other sources.
The committee provided a range of cost estimates in its analysis because of the lack of detailed platforms. It found that Harris’ measures could have no significant impact on the debt or could increase it by $8.1 trillion. And Trump’s proposals could balloon the debt by between $1.5 trillion and $15.2 trillion. Also hard to determine is how Americans and companies could alter their behavior if these policies were to take effect. Nearly all require congressional approval.
Neither Harris nor Trump has talked about reducing the nation’s heavy debt load, even though both congressional Republicans and Democrats have repeatedly said they want to rein in the debt, which currently stands at $35.7 trillion. But the federal government continues to spend more money than it collects in revenue, causing the debt to keep climbing swiftly. An array of experts, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have said the nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path.
“We’re already spending more on interest than on Medicare and defense, and this high debt really kind of crowds out everything else,” Marc Goldwein, the committee’s senior policy director, told CNN. “It crowds out investment in the private sector, so we have less economic growth. It crowds out spending in the public sector, so we have less room to pay for our other priorities.”
The Trump campaign took issue with the committee’s analysis, saying it opposed the tax cuts law in 2017.
“President Trump’s historic tax cuts laid the foundation for robust, non-inflationary growth that fueled more revenue for the federal government, not less,” Brian Hughes, a campaign senior advisor, said in a statement. “President Trump’s plan will rein in wasteful spending, defeat inflation, reduce the burden of interest costs, and ignite economic growth that fuels federal revenue, so we can make our economy great again.”
The Harris campaign said it sharply disagreed with the analysis and committed that her budgets would reduce the deficit. It pointed to other studies that showed her proposals could potentially cut the deficit depending on how much of the tax cuts she decides to extend and how many of President Joe Biden’s tax proposals she adopts.
Harris’ proposals
The priciest item in the vice president’s platform is extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions for those making less than $400,000 a year — which would cost $3 trillion, according to the committee. The law’s individual income and estate tax provisions are expiring at the end of 2025.
That’s followed by expanding the child tax credit and earned income tax credit, which come with a $1.4 trillion price tag, and extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, which adds $550 billion.
The committee also included Harris’ proposals for supporting affordable housing, manufacturers and small businesses; eliminating taxes on tips; improving border security; and beefing up education and the care economy, including establishing a national paid family and medical leave program. These proposals would cost $2.3 trillion in total.
(For some of these items, the committee used measures contained in Biden administration budgets and packages as models since Harris has not unveiled more detailed policies.)
Harris would partially offset the cost of her platform by hiking the corporate tax and capital gains rates each to 28%, as well as increasing other taxes on wealthier Americans and big corporations — though these moves are not expected to fully foot the bill. The committee assumes she would propose many of the revenue-raising provisions in Biden’s budget since her campaign has said she supports them.
Trump’s measures
The former president wants to extend nearly all the provisions of the 2017 tax cuts law, one of the signature achievements in his first term. But he would add to the price tag with certain other measures, such as eliminating the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions and restoring companies’ ability to immediately deduct investments in equipment and research. Altogether, this would cost nearly $5.4 trillion.
Trump has also promised to end taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits, as well as reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% for domestic manufacturers. These measures would reduce revenue by $3.8 trillion.
Also included on the committee’s list are strengthening the military, securing the border and deporting unauthorized immigrants, enacting housing reforms and providing more support for health care, long-term care and caregiving.
Trump has repeatedly said that the new tariffs he wants to impose — 10% or 20% on every foreign import coming into the US, as well as another tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports — would pay for his proposals.
But the committee estimates these tariffs would bring in between $2 trillion and $4.3 trillion over a decade — not enough to cover Trump’s agenda.
Plus, there would be tradeoffs. Most economists agree that tariffs would raise the prices Americans pay for imported goods. That’s because it’s usually an American company importing the good and paying the tariff. The cost then can get passed down to consumers.
A 10% across-the-board tariff with a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods would cost the average middle-class household about $1,700 annually, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And the Tax Policy Center said the impact could be $1,350 a year for middle-income households.
Another trade-off would be retaliatory tariffs. Analysts say other countries would almost definitely impose tariffs of their own on US products. A trade war could slow the US economy, suppressing the amount of revenue the government takes in.
Trump has also promised to expand energy production, eliminate the Department of Education and root out waste, fraud and abuse. These measures would raise or save nearly $1.1 trillion, the committee found.
CNN’s Katie Lobosco and Matt Egan contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with comment from the Harris and Trump campaigns.