Republican tax plans don't add up

[Admin]

The tax-cut proposals from Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, in conjunction with their calls for balancing the budget, would dictate low levels of government spending not seen since about 1950, as we explain in a new paper.  Programs that receive support across the political spectrum and are important to the well-being of most Americans would dramatically shrink or disappear altogether.

Even if policymakers didn’t achieve budget balance under their tax-cut plans but simply offset the costs of the plans themselves, the consequences to essential programs — and to low- and middle-income Americans — would be severe.  These conclusions emerge from an analysis of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’s (TPC) revenue estimates of the Trump and Cruz tax plans — which would reduce revenues by $9.5 trillion and $8.7 trillion over the next ten years, respectively, according to TPC — and CBPP estimates of what such revenue levels imply for government spending.

Measured as a percent of the economy (gross domestic product or GDP), revenues would fall to their lowest level since 1950 under the Trump tax cuts and to their third-lowest level since 1950 under the Cruz tax cuts.  Social Security spending was just 0.3 percent of GDP in 1950 and Medicare did not exist.  Social Security and Medicare spending now amounts to 8.1 percent of GDP and continues to rise, primarily due to the aging of the population.  The 1950 revenue base is inadequate for today’s needs (see chart).

Offsetting the cost of the Trump or Cruz tax cuts would require cuts in government programs that far exceed the painfully deep reductions in the budget plan the Republican majority on the House Budget Committee recently approved.  Offsetting the costs of the tax cuts and balancing the budget, as both candidates support doing, would require spending cuts about two and one-half times the size of the Budget Committee cuts.

Trump, Cruz Tax-Cut Plans Would Force Historically Dramatic Cuts | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

And most of the benefits of these tax cuts go to..