When Barack Obama took office, America’s national debt was $10.6 trillion. It's now $19.0 trillion—an increase of $8.4 trillion in just seven years, or $1.2 trillion per year.
One of the key reasons the Tea Party movement was founded was out of frustration with this skyrocketing debt. Yet Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposed tax plan would increase the national debt by $10.1 trillion, according to scoring by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. And that's after taking into account the increased economic growth that Trump's plan would generate. (Without such growth—and liberal scorekeepers would say the Tax Foundation's model is overly generous in projecting growth—Trump's tax plan would increase deficits by $12.0 trillion.)
It's pretty incredible that just one Trump policy proposal would generate more debt than seven years of Obama.
The projected deficits from Trump's tax plan are more than four times as high as those from any other current presidential candidates' tax plan. Compare, for example, Trump's proposal with that of his closest competitor in Iowa, Ted Cruz. The Tax Foundation estimates that Cruz's tax plan would increase deficits by $768 billion—less than 8 percent as much as Trump's $10.1 trillion. At the same time, the Tax Foundation projects that Cruz's plan would generate more growth than Trump's—a 13.9 percent increase in the gross domestic product over the long term for Cruz, compared with 11.5 percent for Trump. So in comparison with Cruz, Trump would offer less growth for more than 13 times the debt.
In truth, the Tax Foundation's scoring suggests that Trump's plan would increase the national debt by even more than $10.1 trillion, as that scoring doesn't take into account the economic or fiscal effects of increased interest on the debt.
Thomas Jefferson wrote of the misery that bad government can bring about in society, saying, "And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." Whatever Trump's merits in giving voice to concerns that establishment politicians have ignored, after seven years of Obama, the last thing America needs is another profligate president.