And now we are five. The Tax Policy Center has analyzed Bernie Sanders’ tax plan, and we now have data for everyone still running except John Kasich, who hasn’t produced any tax proposals yet. The full reports are here: Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders. Click the links for details. Or just look at the charts below for the nickel summary.
As before, the Republican plans are all the same: a tiny tax cut for the middle class as a sop to distract them from the enormous payday they give to the rich, and a massive hole in the deficit.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s plan is fairly modest. It leaves the middle class alone and taxes the rich a little more. Once her domestic proposals are paid for, it’s probably deficit neutral. Bernie Sanders is far more extreme. He’s basically the mirror image of the Republicans: he’d tax the middle class moderately more and soak the hell out of the rich. This would raise a tremendous amount of money, which he’d use to pay for his health care plan and his other domestic proposals. It’s impossible to say for sure how this would affect the deficit, but the evidence suggests that it would blow a pretty big hole since he plans to spend quite a bit more money than he’d raise.
So that’s that. Quite a choice we have this year.
