Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fired the first barb of the first presidential debate Monday by calling Republican nominee Donald Trump’s economic plan “trumped up trickle down.”
“The kind of plan that Donald has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again,” Clinton said. “In fact, it would be the most extreme version. The biggest tax cuts for the top percents of the people in this country than we ever had. I call it trumped up trickle down because that’s exactly what it would be.”
The question came in response to Trump’s statements on his economic plan calling for a stop to jobs leaving the United States for Mexico and other countries with cheaper labor.
Early the debate, Clinton returned to the criticism that Trump would cut taxes for the rich several times, trying to characterize his economic plans as similar to those of President George W. Bush’s, but worse.
“He really believes the more you help wealthy people, the better off we’ll be,” she said at one point.
Outside analyses suggest that Trump’s plan would cut taxes across the board, but for high income earners the most. The Tax Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, estimated that the latest version of his tax plan would increase the after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of earners by 10 percent to 16 percent, or at least $80,000 annually. Meanwhile, the bottom 10 percent of earners would only get a 1.2 percent boost.
Trump, however, defended the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy were justified, saying that they would create “tremendous” jobs.”
“I’m going to cut taxes big league, you are going to raise tax increases big league, end of story,” he said.
The vast bulk of Clinton’s tax increases would fall on the top 1 percent, according to an analysis of her proposals from the Tax Foundation. Another nonprofit, the Tax Policy Center, found that the top 0.1 percent of income earners, people with incomes over $3.8 million annually, would pay an extra $500,000-plus increase in taxes immediately and more in future years.
In Monday’s debate, Clinton acknowledged that she planned to finance her spending plans by “raising taxes on the wealthy, because they have made all the gains in the economy.”
Among the Clinton proposals that would soak the rich: A cap on deductions that high earners can claim, the “Buffett rule” requiring rich families to pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent, a 4 percent surtax on incomes over $5 million, and a steeper estate tax.
There is one hitch to Clinton’s attempt to limit tax increases to the wealthy, though. If the effects of tax hikes on business and investment are taken into account, it’s plausible that families across the income spectrum would be worse off. Clinton’s proposed tax increases on businesses and investments, as well as on labor, likely would harm growth and lower the incomes of all income earners, the Tax Foundation found.
