Our good friends at the Tax Policy Center have now analyzed—if that’s the right word—the tax plans of Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio. You can get all the details at their site, but if you just want the bottom line, you’ve come to the right place.
The chart on the left shows who benefits the most from each tax plan. Unsurprisingly, they’re all about the same: middle income taxpayers would see their take-home pay go up 3 or 4 percent, while the rich would see it go up a whopping 10-17 percent. On the deficit side of things, everyone’s a budget buster. Rubio and Bush would pile up the red ink by $7 trillion or so (over ten years) while Trump would clock in at about $9 trillion. That compares to a current national debt of $14 trillion.
No one will care, of course, and no one will even bother questioning any of them about this. After all, we already know they’ll just declare that their tax cuts will supercharge the economy and pay for themselves. They can say it in their sleep. Then Trump will say something stupid, or Rubio will break his tooth on a Twix bar, and we’ll move on.
