During the 2024 campaign, Vice President Harris has proposed to significantly expand the Child Tax Credit and other individual tax credits, increase support for housing and health care, lower taxes on tips, and strengthen border security. She has also called for spending and tax breaks for child care, education, long-term care, preschool, paid leave, domestic research and manufacturing, and small businesses; and she has expressed support for extending expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA) for households making under $400,000 per year.
President Trump, meanwhile, has proposed to modify and extend the TCJA, further cut taxes for corporations, increase military spending, strengthen border security, expand deportations and immigration enforcement, and increase support for housing, health care, and long-term care. He has also proposed ending the taxation of tip income, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits.
To help offset the costs of her plan, Vice President Harris has proposed increasing taxes on corporations and high-income households and reducing prescription drug prices. Her campaign also says she supports the revenue-raising provisions in President Biden’s FY 2025 budget, which would further increase taxes on corporations and high-income households.
To help offset the costs of his plan, President Trump would impose new tariffs on imports; repeal energy- and environment-related spending, tax cuts, and regulations; cut fraudulent spending; and end the Department of Education.
Under our central estimate, both plans would add substantially to the debt. Specifically, we find the Harris plan would add $3.50 trillion to the debt over the ten-year period from FY 2026 through 2035 and the Trump plan would add $7.50 trillion to the debt over that same period.
These findings involve a high degree of uncertainty, mostly due to questions about the details of how candidates’ policies are designed. We have therefore relied on candidate statements, campaign feedback, past budget proposals, and other sources for enough detail to credibly estimate the potential costs or savings and in most cases have produced wide-ranging estimates that reflect many different potential policy choices.
Furthermore, even fully detailed and previously analyzed policies have uncertain costs. This is especially true of policies that, if implemented, might significantly alter behavior. In these cases, we look to different scores as well as the available academic literature on behavioral responses.
Where possible, we analyze a wide range of behavioral responses. Our ranges also reflect different estimates from different sources and different estimating methods.
As in past election years, this analysis presents high- and low-cost estimates for each proposal along with our central estimates. The high-cost estimates reflect the upper bound for likely potential costs and the lower bound for potential savings and therefore represent our maximum estimate for the overall budget impact of a candidate’s plan. Our low-cost estimates reflect the inverse and therefore represent our minimum estimate for the overall budget impact of a candidate’s plan. We discuss the specific differences between our estimates in our descriptions of each policy area and provide general discussion of our methodology in Appendix I.
Under our low-cost estimate, we find the Harris plan would be roughly deficit neutral, while the Trump plan would increase the debt by $1.45 trillion. Under our high-cost estimate, we find the Harris plan would increase debt by $8.10 trillion, while the Trump plan would increase debt by $15.15 trillion. | 
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