WASHINGTON (AP) – Sen. Bernie Sanders’ tax and spending proposals would provide new levels of health and education benefits for American families, but they’d also blow an $18-trillion hole in federal deficits, piling on so much debt they would damage the economy.
That sobering assessment comes from a joint analysis released Monday by the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute Health Policy Center, well-known Washington think tanks.
The bottom line: Sanders would raise taxes by more than $15 trillion over 10 years, with most of that paid by upper-income earners. But his proposed government-run health care system, along with free undergraduate college, enhanced Social Security, family and medical leave, and other new programs, would spend far more, adding $18 trillion to federal debt over a decade.
“The dramatic increase in government borrowing would crowd out private investment, raise interest rates, further increase government borrowing costs and retard economic growth,” the analysis concluded.
There was no immediate response from the Sanders camp, but in the past the campaign has dismissed other such assessments as flawed.