Leading budget hawks are soundly rejecting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s claim that he can eliminate more than $19 trillion of national debt in eight years.
“That’s ridiculous,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who served as the top budget adviser to President George W. Bush, said during a panel hosted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
{mosads}Daniels’s comments were seconded by the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, Alice Rivlin.
“I’ll tell you a secret: He can’t do it,” said Rivlin, who also led the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton.
Trump made the pledge in a Saturday interview with The Washington Post. When asked how he would achieve such a drastic reduction of the deficit, Trump said he wasn’t looking at tax increases.
“I don’t think I’ll need to [raise taxes]. The power is trade. Our deals are so bad,” Trump said.
The same day, Trump’s promise was called “nonsensical” by the Post’s independent Fact Checker blog.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is nonpartisan, has said that Trump’s tax and economics plan would actually drive the debt up to about $38 trillion — nearly double the current level.
Economists across the spectrum have scoffed at Trump’s pledge. To slash $19 trillion from the federal deficit could require cutting the annual $4 trillion budget in half to pay off the country’s debt holders.
Trump’s pledge to eliminate the current debt also doesn’t include the projected increase of nearly $6.8 trillion between 2017 and 2024.
—This post was updated April 5 at 2:46 p.m.