Members of Hillary Clinton's staff are testing a new line of attack against Donald Trump. | Getty Clinton's camp attacks Trump as heartless tycoon

Hillary Clinton's campaign is road-testing a new line of attack against Donald Trump — heartless tycoon.

The Democratic front-runner's camp held a conference call on Monday afternoon slamming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s economic proposals, which they said would slash taxes for millionaires to the lowest level in modern U.S. history.


The call was focused exclusively on Trump, with Clinton senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan and former National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling making no mention of Bernie Sanders, whose own tax plan was making headlines on Monday. The Tax Policy Center dropped a report as the Clinton call commenced that found the Vermont senator's platform would create a whopping $33 trillion federal spending increase over 10 years.

But the Clinton camp was aiming its fire at Trump.

“To put it simply, Donald Trump has put forward a tax plan that places him squarely on the side of the super wealthy and corporations at the expense of the middle class and working families,” Sullivan told reporters. “His plan adds trillions in tax breaks to millionaires and corporations, blows a massive hole in the federal budget and even puts Social Security and Medicare at risk.”

“His plan would cut millionaires’ taxes to the lowest level in modern history,” he continued. “In fact, there’s a technical term for his tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires: yuge. This is a tax plan by the billionaire, for the billionaires.”

The attempt to paint Trump as a tool of the wealthy elite comes as Clinton is still trying to put Sanders in the rear-view mirror and is clearly eager to start tearing into the real estate mogul. Clinton's campaign, however, did not choose to zero in on Trump's shifting statements on his tax proposals, but rather his most recent suggestion that the very rich should also get a break from current taxation levels.

Trump suggested Sunday that his tax plan is negotiable. He told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that taxes for the wealthy “really should go up,” in contrast to his proposal, but maintained that the numbers outlined in his plan are simply a “floor.”

When pressed on CNN on Monday, Trump said that everyone — from the middle class to businesses to the wealthy — would get tax breaks, though moments later he suggested he would increase taxes on the wealthy. But if he does, he said, “they’re still going to pay less than they pay now.”

Sperling, who worked under the Clinton and Obama administrations, called Trump’s policy “the most risky, reckless and regressive tax proposal ever put forward by a major presidential candidate.” The Tax Policy Center estimated Trump’s plan would cost $9.5 trillion in the first decade, a lower estimate than the more conservative Tax Foundation, which found that Trump’s proposal would cost $12 trillion.

“They estimate it would raise the debt over 20 years by $45 trillion,” Sperling said, referring to a Tax Policy Center analysis. He added that the Center for Budget and Public Policy, using Tax Policy’s figures, found that $3.2 trillion in tax breaks would go to people who make more than $1 million.

“What was stunning is that they said it would come to 1.5 percent of GDP,” he said. “That amount would allow us — the amount of money in his tax cuts that goes only to people who make over $1 million would be enough to make Social Security and Medicare solvent for 75 years.”

Nevertheless, Trump touted his tax plan Monday, declaring on Twitter that he is “lowering taxes far more than any other candidate. Any negotiated increase by Congress to my proposal would still be lower than current!”

Trump has said he would lower his top rate from almost 40 percent to 25 percent, but that isn’t the case, Sperling argued.

“Every hedge fund, every well-off hedge fund manager, every partner in a major corporate law firm, people like Donald Trump himself, would be paying 15 percent,” he said. “Their tax rate would go from about 40 percent — 39.6 — to 15 percent. And truthfully, these numbers that say how reckless and regressive his program is, is understated.”