Hillary Clinton’s campaign proposals for spending and taxing add up and wouldn’t result in greater deficits than projected today, according to an analysis published Monday.
Clinton’s platform amounts to $1.8 trillion in new spending and tax breaks, but also includes enough new tax increases and other government savings that her platform wouldn’t significantly add to the federal debt.
The Democratic front-runner “should be commended” for offering specific plans to pay for the new government programs she favors, concluded the analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington nonprofit that favors policies to lower the federal deficit and debt.
“However, with debt at post-war record high levels and projected to grow unsustainably, simply remaining on our current course is not enough,” the report added.
The group has performed similar analyses for the other leading presidential contenders, including Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Democrat Bernie Sanders, and found that their plans would cause the debt to soar.
The committee’s analysis tallied up Clinton’s proposals, ranging from her plans for debt-free college and expanding Obamacare to boosting infrastructure spending, using cost estimates from official government sources.
In total, the policies Clinton has outlined would cost the government $1.8 trillion, including interest on the added federal debt.
Her campaign, however, has identified $1.6 trillion worth of measures to offset those losses, including $1.3 trillion of tax increases, most of which would fall on high incomes. The former secretary of state also has called for $200 billion of spending reforms and $100 billion of savings from immigration reform.
Clinton also has advocated corporate tax reform that would raise $275 billion, enough to put her plans in the black over 10 years, if only on paper.
Clinton’s platform wouldn’t accelerate the run-up in the federal debt. But under current law, the debt is projected to rise, and her plans wouldn’t do anything to stop that.
The federal debt would rise from 74 percent of gross domestic product currently to 86 percent by 2026 under Clinton’s fiscal plans. She also has called for reversing the across-the-board spending cuts imposed in the wake of the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations, without saying specifically how she would offset the additional spending. That could push the debt to 90 percent of GDP, according to the committee.
