WASHINGTON DC (July 30, 2019) — Tonight and tomorrow's Democratic presidential primary debates mark the second of the 2020 campaign and will surely touch on fiscal issues.
Through our US Budget Watch 2020 project, we will factcheck candidates' claims and estimate the fiscal costs of their proposals. During the 2016 campaign cycle – through our Fiscal FactChecks and signature report Promises and Price Tags – we tallied the cost of every significant proposal from the major presidential candidates.
We'll be factchecking the budget-related claims at our Fiscal FactCheck page and live-tweeting using the Twitter handle @BudgetHawks.
Seven senators will be on the stage and scheduled to vote later this week on the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) of 2019, a 2-year spending increase that would raise discretionary spending by $320 billion. By our estimate, the BBA19 would add roughly $1.7 trillion to projected debt levels over the next decade and cost nearly as much as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This estimate is the net effect of $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending increases, $250 billion in interest costs, and just $55 billion of offsets.
Tonight and tomorrow, we will be live on social media offering our expert analysis for why the candidates’ claims are (or are not) true. Follow us on our Fiscal FactCheck page and on Twitter and Facebook. If you believe that we have overlooked a particular claim that should be addressed, contact us and we will do our best to run the claim through our Fiscal FactCheck.
