Whose economic policies are worse for the nation’s debt? Trump’s or Harris’?

If there’s one thing both presidential candidates know, it's that the economy is the top issue for voters. Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump want voters to believe they have the optimal economic plan over their opponent .

"He doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends," Harris said of Trump. "And he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt."

"She's raising taxes. She's going to give a tax increase of four to five times what people and companies are paying right now. The country will go into a depression if they do it," Trump said of Harris.

For months, voters have said they trust Trump more with the economy but Harris is chipping away at that lead. In the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll , 43% of voters preferred Trump’s approach to the economy compared to 40% who preferred Harris’ approach. That 3% point difference is within the margin of error. Just one month ago, Trump had a 12% lead.

Another boost to Harris’ camp is that independent analyses show Trump’s economic proposals will add more to the growing national debt than Harris’. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, Harris’ campaign promises would increase deficits by $2 trillion over the next 10 years, while Trump’s promises would add $4.1 trillion in deficits, more than double that of Harris.

However, these analyses do not include revenue changes from both candidates' proposals not to tax tips and Trump's comments on widespread tariffs . Penn Wharton notes that key details are missing from Trump's tariff proposals to calculate the impact and while they could raise trillions of dollars in new revenue, tariffs could also lead to revenue losses from retaliatory actions.

Penn Wharton is not the only independent source calculating the impacts of both Trump's and Harris' economic policies. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's Budget Watch digs into each proposal as it comes in. Straight Arrow News interviewed Marc Goldwein, CRFB's senior vice president and senior policy director, for its nonpartisan take.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. Watch the full interview in the video above.

Simone Del Rosario: Trump says his policies , like his tax cuts, will pay for themselves through economic growth. But are you also finding that the damage to the nation’s deficits is more under Trump’s proposals than Harris’?

Marc Goldwein: I think it's too soon to tell who is worse on the debt. Vice President Harris actually has not released most of her agenda yet, and so it's very premature. And for President Trump, we do have a lot of tax cuts, but we also have things like tariffs that raise revenue .

What I think we do know is that neither candidate is winning any awards for deficit reduction , right? [For] both candidates, it does look like they're likely to be in the red. Neither candidate has put forward a plan that's going to save Social Security, make Medicare solvent, stop our debt from reaching record levels as a share of the economy, or get our interest cost under control.

Simone Del Rosario: That's a really fair point. Both are trying to vie for this position as more fiscally responsible. But at the end of the day, both plans would add to the nation's debt, which exceeds $35 trillion today.

Marc Goldwein: Yeah, it's tremendous. I like to measure debt relative to the economy, and by that measure, we're at 100%. We've only ever been there once in our history and it was right after World War II.

Simone Del Rosario: From what we know of their plans, the economy will grow more under Trump's policies than Harris', right?

Marc Goldwein: President Trump supports a lot of policies that are probably pro growth; for example, lowering taxes on Social Security benefits and for businesses and individuals. But he also supports a lot of policies that would shrink economic growth; for example, tariffs. Tariffs are almost universally understood to slow economic growth ; and deportation, if by no other reason than you're literally losing the number of workers.

So I think if you look at Trump's plan on the whole, it's not actually clear which direction it goes to. [It's a] similar situation with Vice President Harris' plan. We don't have all the details. In general, the tax increases she's talked about, I think tend to reduce economic growth, but if she pays for them, that can be a step in the right direction.

Simone Del Rosario: These analyses also assume that either candidate gets their way. Harris, like you said, plans to pay for her spending by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Congress has to agree to that and there's no guarantee that's going to happen. How important is that part of her plan to minimize how much the national debt would grow under her spending policies? And what happens if she doesn't get those tax raises?

Marc Goldwein: It's really important that both candidates be firm here that they're not going to support their agenda unless it's fully paid for, right? Because what happens in the campaign and what happens in Congress is obviously always going to be different. What's important is that you have that bottom line.

This is what President Obama did. He said, 'Look, I'm going to negotiate the details of my health care plan, but it's got to be fully paid for.' We see similar things from other administrations as well on the left and right. You have to have that bottom line.

Simone Del Rosario: Talk to me specifically about the main differences between these two candidates and their proposals. What groups stand to benefit the most from each candidate's economic policies?

Marc Goldwein: Well, actually, what's interesting to me is a lot of the similarities. There's a tit for tat here where President Trump says no taxes on tips, and so Vice President Harris says, 'Well, I'm not going to do that either.' The Democrats say a $3,000 child tax credit, so vice presidential candidate [JD] Vance says, 'Maybe it's $6,000 $5,000.' So Democrats come back and say $6,000.

What I'm actually mostly worried about is the commonalities as they are trying to outbid each other to see who can cut taxes more and who can increase spending more. And they're not trying to outbid each other at all on who can reduce the deficit more or save Social Security better.

Simone Del Rosario: But both parties say no-taxation-on-tips is a policy they want to move forward with. It sounds great to get people to vote for you, but that's not a good policy when it comes to the budget, right?

Marc Goldwein: Yeah, I've yet to meet an economist that thinks we should have a lower tax rate for somebody that's a waitress making $15 an hour versus somebody working at McDonald's making $15 an hour. So I'm not sure this is the right kind of policy.

That's what we see during campaign seasons: a lot of policies that maybe don't make sense in the real world because they're trying to buy votes. And that's again, why fiscal responsibility is so important, because if you have to tell the voters, 'Sure, you get this, but in exchange, you're going to get less of this, you've got to pay more on that,' that allows people to weigh the trade-offs appropriately.

Simone Del Rosario: What is your advice for voters as they're trying to educate themselves on these different economic proposals to decide their vote?

Marc Goldwein: I would say, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. It's very easy to make promises. It's very hard to deliver on them, and it's even harder to sustain them if you don't have a good plan to pay for your promises.

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