Trump’s Plan Could Save $7 Trillion

Donald Trump’s policies will lead to a surplus of at least $4 trillion over the course of a decade, according to Sam Clovis, the Trump campaign’s co-chairman.

“Our proposals, what we think will happen, will lead us in fact to about a $4.5 to $7 trillion surplus at the end of 10 years, if all of our initiatives are put in place,” Clovis said at a conference sponsored by The Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Clovis also suggested that a Trump administration might eventually address out-of-control entitlement spending.

Clovis’ claim, however, is in stark contradiction to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, which estimates that Trump’s economic policies will add another $10 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. That estimate is on top of the already $9 trillion in projected government deficits in that time.

But according to Clovis, the Tax Foundation does not use “dynamic scoring,” which skewed its projection. He claimed that additional economic growth would make the $10 trillion figure a “more manageable” number. “Growth helps us a tremendous amount,” he said.

Clovis also suggested that a Trump administration might eventually address out-of-control entitlement spending. “We will start to take a look at all of the programs, including entitlement expenditures like Social Security and Medicare. We’ll take a hard look at those, to start seeing what we can do in a bipartisan way to affect that,” he said.

[lz_table title=”Conflicting Analysis of Trump’s Policy Effect on Deficit” source=”The Tax Foundation, Tax Policy Center, Sam Clovis”]
Tax Foundation, -$10T
Tax Policy Center, -$9.5T
Trump Campaign, +$4.5-$7T
[/lz_table]

However, this statement was contradicted by Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks. “I read his statements as though we need to examine budgetary discipline to protect programs like Social Security and Medicare, which is exactly what Mr. Trump intends to do,” she told The Wall Street Journal.

Indeed, there is a marked level of confusion among politicians and policy analysts about what Trump’s plans actually are. “The general frustration from people like me is that any policy prescriptions he puts out seem to be very flexible,” a Republican congressional tax aide told Politico.

“Even policies he puts out, he doesn’t seem to own,” so “it’s hard to know which policies he intends to support,” the aide said.

David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, was far more blunt. “I understand less about Trump’s budget plan after listening to Mr.Clovis than I did before,” he tweeted.

[lz_table title=”Projected 10-year Deficit (in billions)” source=”CBO”]
2016,$544B
2017,$561B
2018,$572B
2019,$738B
2020,$810B
2021,$893B
2022,$1044B
2023,$1077B
2024,$1089B
2025,$1226B
2026,$1366B
[/lz_table]

In the end, however, the confusion may not matter. Clovis indicated that while Trump has released a tax plan, it is really a “starting point,” and Trump himself has said he is open to negotiating his proposed top individual rate of 25 percent with Congress.

Trump’s proposed tax plan “is not going to be the hill we’re going to die on,” Clovis said.