As written, Bernie Sanders’ plan is highly progressive, with the poor the biggest winners and the rich taking a big hit | AP Photo Bernie Sanders' $33 trillion spending explosion

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed a whopping $33 trillion federal spending increase over 10 years, according to a new report likely to fuel complaints his campaign promises are unrealistic.

His proposed tax increases would not come anywhere close to covering those costs, the centrist Tax Policy Center said Monday, and his plan would drive federal debt to “unprecedented” levels.


The report comes as rival Hillary Clinton, now closing in on the Democratic party’s nomination, has repeatedly complained that the numbers behind Sanders’ tax-and-spending plans do not add up. Clinton has proposed a far more modest legislative agenda, though she has nevertheless been under pressure by Sanders to tack leftward.

Even after accounting for his $15.3 trillion in tax increases, the Tax Policy Center said, Sanders would still add $21 trillion to the debt over the next decade. That would amount to more than doubling the big deficits the government is already projected to run.

That would create a potentially significant drag on the economy, which could increase costs for everyone from businesses looking to invest in new equipment to people trying to buy a home, said Len Burman, head of the Washington-based group.

“That could be very damaging to the economy,” he said. “Sanders would obviously need a whole lot more revenues to pay for this.”

The Tax Policy Center got it “half right,” a Sanders aide said in a statement.

While the analysis found Sanders' plan would help low- and middle-income people even more than the campaign estimated, Warren Gunnels said the center “wildly exaggerated” the cost of Sanders’ health care plans.

“This study significantly understates the savings in administration, paperwork, and prescription drug prices that every major country on earth has successfully achieved by adopting a universal health care program,” said Gunnells, Sanders’ policy director. “If every other major country can spend less on health care and insure all of their people, so can the U.S.”

As written, Sanders’ plan is highly progressive, with the poor the biggest winners and the rich taking a big hit

“It is safe to say that we have never seen a proposal as progressive as Sanders’ tax and transfer package,” Burman told reporters.

Those in the bottom 20 percent of incomes would see average gains of more than $10,000, which would be equivalent to a 280 percent increase in their incomes. Those in the dead center of the income ladder would see an $8,500 gain, a 21 percent increase. Meanwhile, those in the top 5 percent would end up paying $110,000, which would amount to a 17 percent decline in their incomes.

But Sanders has already proposed so many tax hikes on the wealthy that he would have to start looking at taxpayers further down the income ladder for the additional revenue needed to make his budget plans work, the Tax Policy Center said. That, in turn, would change the distribution of winners and losers under Sanders’s plans, the group said.

“He could not rely on additional income from high-income people," said Burman.

The analysis was prompted by complaints from the Sanders' campaign that a March analysis of his tax plans by the group – which showed taxes going up for virtually everyone – was misleading because it did not include the benefits people would receive on the spending side of the ledger.

“We thought the Sanders campaign had a point that you’d get a very different picture if you looked at spending, along with taxes,” said Burman.

Monday’s report finds the value of those benefits would outstrip the cost of Sander’s tax increases for 95 percent of households, with an average gain of almost $4,300 in 2017.

Sanders has proposed creating or expanding a host of government benefits. By far the priciest item on his agenda is his call for single-payer health coverage, which the Tax Policy Center says would cost $29 trillion over a decade.

His plan to offer new long-term care services for the elderly would cost another $2.9 trillion, and free tuition at public colleagues would cost $800 billion, the group said. His family medical leave plan would run $270 billion, while his bid to expand Social Security benefits would cost $188 billion.

Sanders has proposed more than two dozen tax increases, which would hit the wealthy the hardest, but he’s also called for expansions of payroll taxes, which would affect virtually everyone.

The government would have to increase borrowing to cover the gap between the cost of Sanders’ spending plans and the revenue his tax hikes would bring in. That could create a drag on the economy, because it means there will be more demand for all the money out there in the world that can be borrowed. That, in turn. pushes up how much people with money to lend can charge for interest.

The wealthy are probably close to tapped out under Sanders' plan, said Burman, which he noted would already push the top income tax rate to more than 70 percent and nearly triple capital gains taxes to 64 percent.

"Those rates have got to be close to the highest levels that could be assessed without starting to lose revenue,” said Burman. Many countries with such expansive government benefits have broader tax systems, such as value-added taxes, which hit poor people harder, he said.

“President Sanders would have to rely more on much more broad-based taxes” and “that would change the distribution of net benefits” under his plan, Burman said.

