Whose economic policies are worse for the nation’s debt? Trump’s or Harris’?

Simone Del Rosario: If there’s one thing both presidential candidates know, it’s that the economy is the top issue for voters. And both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump want you to believe they have the optimal economic plan over their opponent. 

Kamala Harris: He doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends. And he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt.

Donald Trump: She’s raising taxes. She’s going to give a tax increase of four to five times what people and companies are paying right now. The country will go into a depression if they do it.

Simone Del Rosario: For months, voters have said they trust Trump more with the economy, but Harris is chipping away at that lead. In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, 43% of voters preferred Trump’s approach to the economy compared to 40% who preferred Harris’ approach. That 3-percentage-point difference is within the margin of error. Just a month ago, Trump had an 11-point lead. 

Another boost to Harris’ camp is that independent analyses show Trump’s economic proposals will add more to the growing national debt than Harris’. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, Harris’ campaign promises would increase deficits by $2 trillion over the next 10 years, while Trump’s promises would add $4.1 trillion in deficits, more than double that of Harris. 

That’s not the only source, we’re going to go to another one now. Let’s bring in Marc Goldwein, Senior VP and Senior Policy Director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

CRFB is the place to go to know how individual policies and proposals affect the country’s bottom line. Trump says his policies, like his tax cuts, will pay for themselves through economic growth. But are you also finding that the damage to the nation’s deficits is more under Trump’s proposals than Harris’? 

Marc Goldwein: Well, I think it’s too soon to tell who’s who is worse on the debt. Vice President Harris actually has not released most of her agenda yet, and so it’s very premature. And for President Trump, we do have a lot of tax cuts, but we also have things like tariffs that raise revenue. What I think we do know is that neither candidate is winning any awards for deficit reduction, right? Both candidates, it does look like they’re likely to be in the red. Neither candidate has put forward a plan that’s going to save Social Security, make Medicare solvent, stop our debt from reaching record levels as a share of the economy, or get our interest cost under control.

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah, really fair point. I was going to bring that up. Both are trying to, you know, vie for this idea that they are the ones who are more fiscally responsible. But at the end of the day, both plans would add to the nation’s debt, which, what is it? $35 trillion now,

Marc Goldwein: yeah, it’s tremendous. I mean, I like to measure debt relative to the economy, and by that measure, we’re at like 100% we’ve only ever been there once in our history, and it was right after World War Two.

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah, okay, the economy will grow under Trump’s policies more than Harris’s, though, right from what we know, from what they’re planning. 

Marc Goldwein: President Trump supports a lot of policies that are, I think, probably pro growth. For example, lowering taxes on Social Security benefits and for for businesses and individuals, but he also supports a lot of policies that would shrink economic growth. For example, tariffs, tariffs, I think, are almost universally understood to slow economic growth and deportation, if by no other reason than you’re literally losing the number of workers. So I think if you look at Trump’s plan on the whole, it’s not actually clear which direction it goes. To similar situation with Vice President Harris’s plan. We don’t have all the details. In general, the tax increases she’s talked about are going to try things tend to reduce economic growth, but if she pays for them that that can be a step in the right direction.

Simone Del Rosario: Yeah. These analyses also assume that either candidate gets their way. You know, Harris, like you said, plans to pay for her spending by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Congress has to agree to that, and there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. How important is that part of her plan to minimize how much the national debt would grow under her spending policies? And you know, what happens if she doesn’t get those tax raises?

Marc Goldwein: Well, look, it’s really important that both candidates be firm here that they’re not going to support their agenda unless it’s fully paid for, right? Because what happens to the campaign, what happens in Congress is obviously always going to be different. What’s important is that you have that bottom line. This is what sort of President Obama did. He said, Look, I’m going to negotiate the details of my health care plan, but it’s got to be fully paid for. This is what you know. I mean, we see similar things from other administrations as well, on the left and right. You got to have that bottom line,

Simone Del Rosario: yeah, talk to me specifically about the main differences between these two candidates and their proposals. What groups stand to benefit the most from each candidate’s economic policies.

Marc Goldwein: Well, actually, what’s interesting to me is maybe a lot of the similarities, there’s a tit for tat here where President Trump says no taxes on tips. And so vice president Harris says, Well, I’m not going to do that either. The Democrats say a $3,000 child tax credit. So vice president so candidate Vance, Senator Vance, says, maybe it’s 6000 $5,000 So Democrats come back and say $6,000 what I’m actually mostly worried about is the commonalities. Is they are trying to outbid each other to see who can cut taxes more and who can increase spending more. And they’re not trying to outbid each other at all on who can reduce the deficit more or save Social Security better.

Simone Del Rosario: I don’t want to pick on people who you know. Know, make a lot of their living on on tips, but for both parties saying that this is a policy that they want to move forward with. You know, sounds great to get people to vote for you, but, but that’s not a good policy when it comes to the budget, right?

Marc Goldwein: Yeah, I’ve yet to meet an economist that thinks we should have a lower tax rate for somebody that’s a waitress making $15 an hour versus somebody working at McDonald’s making $15 an hour. So I’m not sure this is the right kind of policy. That’s what we see during campaign season. A lot of policies that maybe don’t make sense in the real world because they’re trying to buy votes. And that’s again, why fiscal responsibility is so important. Because if you have to tell the voters Sure, you get this, but in exchange, you’re going to get less of this, you’ve got to pay more on that. That allows people to weigh the trade offs appropriately.

Simone Del Rosario: As voters decide in November who they want to run the economy, who they whose proposals they like the best. What’s your advice for them to look out for? Because you know, we can go over the analyzes all we want, but it’s hard to sift through all this information, especially knowing what may or may not come to fruition once they are elected. What is your advice for voters, as they’re trying to educate themselves?

Marc Goldwein: Yeah, I would say, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is right. I mean, it’s very easy to make promises. It’s very hard to deliver on them, and it’s even harder to sustain them if you don’t have a good plan to pay for your promises.

Simone Del Rosario: Marc Goldwein, Senior VP and Senior Policy Director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Thank you so much for that today.