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Hillary Clinton’s Debt Promise (That She’d Definitely Break)

October 26, 2016

By Charles Hughes

In the third and final debate last week, Hillary Clinton tried to flex her fiscal responsibility bona fides by vowing  that she “will not add a penny to the debt” on three separate occasions. That must mean she has comprehensive reforms to address entitlements, rein in other spending, and reduce our commitments abroad, if she is not going to add a penny to the current gross debt of $19.7 trillion, right? No, not really.

She is only promising not to make things worse relative to the current baseline, which projects the debt increase to $28.2 trillion over the next decade. To be fair, her plans would add less to the debt than Donald Trump’s, although that’s almost entirely due to an array of new taxes. Even with those hikes, the debt would increase a lot more than a penny were she to win, and neither major party candidate has put forward a substantive plan to address the problems with the country’s fiscal health.

And that’s just the projection over the next decade. The long-term fiscal picture is even bleaker. In the baseline scenario from the most recent Long-Term Budget Outlook from the Congressional Budget Office, federal debt held by the public will almost double by midcentury, from around 77 percent of GDP to more than 140 percent by 2046. Kicking the can down the road, which is effectively the plan by for both candidates in the debate due to their lack of an actual plan, would only increases the magnitude of the changes that will eventually be needed.

Read the full article at the Cato Institute:  Hillary Clinton’s Debt Promise (That She’d Definitely Break)

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