New analysis finds Sanders’s plans would add $19 trillion to debt

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) says the proposals of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would add $19 trillion to the debt — an increase from its previous estimate.

In an analysis published in April, the CRFB estimated that the Independent senator’s proposals would add $2 trillion to $15 trillion to the debt, depending on the cost of Sanders’s single-payer healthcare plan. Since then, two new independent analyses have found that the healthcare plan “would cost dramatically more than the campaign-provided estimates suggest,” the CRFB said Thursday in its updated analysis.

“As a result, we no longer provide a ‘low health cost’ estimate based on the numbers cited by the Sanders campaign,” the group said.

The CRFB found that Sanders would increase spending and revenue “to far beyond any previous levels in the United States over the last half century.”

Sanders’s initiatives would cause debt to rise from 86 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2026 under current law to 154 percent of GDP by 2026, the group said.

The Sanders campaign has estimated that the candidate’s proposals are fully paid for and would lower deficits by $2.8 trillion over 10 years.

But the CRFB found through its analysis of estimates from independent sources that in most cases, Sanders’s tax proposals would not raise enough revenue to offset costs.

The one exception is with his plan to expand Social Security, where the CRFB found that the campaign is overestimating costs and underestimating revenue.

The CRFB has estimated that Sanders’s opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, would not signficantly increase current debt levels. The group estimated that likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would increase the debt by about $12 trillion over a decade.