Two overshadowed vice presidential candidates briefly emerged into the media spotlight on Tuesday night. Their areas of agreement turned out to be more telling than their disagreements.
Both candidates’ tax plans have been brought up during the vice presidential debate.
The Tax Foundation, a conservative D.C. think tank created to argue for lower taxes on the wealthy and corporations, found that Trump’s tax plan would raise the national debt over 10 years by $4.4 trillion and $5.9 trillion on a static basis. The huge $1.5 trillion range in their estimate was required because Trump’s plan provided so few details.
This increase in the federal debt would be between about 2 and 2.5 percent of the entire U.S. gross domestic product over the 10-year period.
Trump’s plan would be an enormous boon to the wealthy, increasing the after-tax income of the richest 1 percent between 10.2 percent and 16.0 percent.
The Tax Foundation estimated that Hillary Clinton’s tax plan would reduce the national debt over the next ten years by $498 billion on a static basic.
Clinton’s plan would reduce the after-tax income of the top 1 percent by 1.7 percent when judged on a static basic, or perhaps more using the Tax Foundation’s own dynamic estimate.