The final debate has come and gone, but there’s a glaring hole in one of the biggest policy questions that impacts millennials: the national debt, which currently hovers just below $20 trillion.
In the waning moments of Wednesday night’s contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, moderator Chris Wallace took the candidates to task by holding their plans to reduce the national debt to the fire.
Wallace cited the Committee for a Responsible Budget’s estimate that under Clinton’s plan debt would rise to 86 percent of the GDP (from 77 percent). Under Trump’s plan, debt would rise to 105 percent of the GDP over the next ten years.
Trump went on the defense first by saying those estimates were completely wrong.
“I’m going to create tremendous jobs,” Trump claimed. “And we’re bringing GDP from, really, 1 percent, which is what it is now, and if she got in, it will be less than zero. But we’re bringing it from 1 percent up to 4 percent.”
He continued by railing against the United States’ current trade deals and the notion that other countries are stealing our jobs.
Economists who have advised presidents over the past half century are not big fans of Trump. An economist who used to advise President Ronald Reagan even said, “I have known personally every Republican president since Richard Nixon. They all showed a real understanding of economics and international affairs….Donald Trump does not have that understanding and does not seem to be concerned about it. That alone disqualifies him in my judgment.”
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is looking to implement another stimulus package like President Obama early on in his presidency after the 2008 stock market crash. When asked about the national debt, Clinton made clear she’s not planning on adding a “single penny” to it. Some how, magically.
“When I talk about how we’re going to pay for education, how we’re going to invest in infrastructure, how we’re going to get the cost of prescription drugs down, and a lot of the other issues that people talk to me about all the time, I’ve made it very clear we are going where the money is. We are going to ask the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share.”
For many economists, Hillary’s stance of growing the size of government and raising taxes is a recipe for disaster on the economy, the national debt, and the future of millennials — and will certainly grow the debt by much more than a “single penny.” Yet, they worry that it will be far worse under a President Trump.
To use an old adage to describe the national debt crisis, if you’re a millennial, would you rather be shot or stabbed by this point?
