Donald Trump's economic plans will raise the federal debt by twice as much as Kamala Harris' proposals, new analysis reveals

Donald Trump's economic plans would raise the federal debt by more than double the proposal presented by Kamala Harris, a new report has claimed.

America's federal debt is forecast to increase to $7.5trillion by 2035 if the GOP hopeful is elected and carries out his jobs and tax plan, according to analysts at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a non-partisan thinktank.

Trump, who has not yet released a comprehensive economic plan, has pledged to lower taxes for individuals and businesses, eliminate taxes on tips, implement tariffs on imported goods, and increase domestic employment opportunities.

Harris, however, plans to expand tax credits for small businesses, improve access to affordable housing and childcare, and raise corporate taxes. Her proposal, according to CRFB analysis, would raise the national debt by $3.5trillion over the same time period.

The report comes as Trump and Harris are locked in a neck-and-neck battle for the White House, with polls showing that in a nation of over 300 million the closest presidential race in modern history is likely to be decided by just thousands of voters in seven battleground states.

Data processed through the DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners model, shows the ex-president winning in 56.7 percent of the simulations over Harris.

Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has created a super political action committee supporting the Republican nominee, which has been spending heavily on get-out-the-vote efforts. Musk also joined Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday - at the site where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July - and warned voters that Trump is only candidate who can 'preserve democracy in America.' 

Trump, 78, has pledged to end taxes on everything from tips to Social Security and overtime pay if he's elected to the White House again. 

He argues his ideas would improve Americans' personal financial standing and the overall US economy, but he hasn't detailed how he would fund those ideas and avoid creating a huge budget shortfall.

Estimates from outside economic analyses of the costs of the various tax cuts ranged between nearly $6trillion and $10trillion over 10 years, depending on which ideas become policy and how they're implemented.

According to the CRFB report, which warns of heightened risk of 'an eventual fiscal crisis', Trump's proposal will increase the federal deficit between $1.45trillion and just above $15trillion.

Harris' proposal, at its best, will not add to the deficit and at worst increase it by $8.1trillion, the report claims.

The national debt currently stands at 99 per cent of gross domestic product. The Congressional Budget Office has warned it is posted to increase to 125 per cent over the next 10 years if the current laws remain unchanged.

Under a Harris Administration, GDP would rise by 8 percentage points to 133 per cent, according to the CRFB analysis. Trump's proposal would see it rise to 142 per cent of GDP.

A debate about the tax code will be a dominant legislative issue next year given that tax cuts Trump signed in 2017 will be set to expire.

If he's elected again, Trump could push Congress to enact some or all of his proposals, though that might be difficult if Democrats end up in control of either the House or the Senate.

In June, Trump announced his plan to exclude workers' tips from federal taxes, saying he got the idea from a waitress at his Las Vegas hotel.

'To those hotel workers and people who get tips, you are going to be very happy, because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips, people making tips,' Trump said, adding: 'We're going to do that right away, first thing in office.'

Trump made the announcement in Nevada, a key battleground state with six electoral votes and home to the highest concentration of tipped workers in the country.

 Nevada has an average of 25.8 waiters and waitresses per 1,000 jobs. 

President Joe Biden won the state in 2020, but the Trump campaign hopes to put it in play this fall.

Trump has not specified whether he wants to exempt tips from just income taxes or from the payroll tax - which funds Medicare and Social Security - as well.

Harris, 59, has echoed Trump's call for no taxes on tips, making a pledge that would apply to hospitality and service industry workers at a Nevada rally of her own two months after her GOP opponent's announcement.

Trump has also pledged tax cuts for older Americans, posting on Truth Social in July that 'SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY!'

The challenge is that taxes on Social Security benefits help to pay for the program. 

The loss of revenue could mean that Social Security would be unable to pay out its full benefits in 2033, two years ahead of the current estimate, according to Brendan Duke of the liberal Center for American Progress.

According to the Social Security Administration, recipients must currently pay federal income taxes if combined income - 50 per cent of the benefit amount plus any other earned income - is higher than $25,000 annually if filing individually, or $32,000 if filing jointly.

While in the Senate, Harris co-sponsored a bill that would have required the wealthy to pay higher Social Security taxes and made benefits more generous for some.

The White House has said her views on the program are similar to Biden's, but Harris hasn't talked in detail about Social Security during her campaign.

Trump has also said he would support legislation to eliminate taxes on overtime pay.

'That gives people more of an incentive to work,' Trump said in September at a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona. 'It gives the companies a lot, it´s a lot easier to get the people.'

Harris has not said if she would also call for cuts to taxes of overtime pay.

Trump's plans include proposed breaks for businesses, too. He's called for lowering the US corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 15 per cent, but only for companies that produce in America

As president, Trump signed legislation in 2017 that cut the corporate tax rate to 21 per cent from 35 per cent.

Harris has said she believes that big corporations and the ultra-wealthy should pay more in taxes - including a 28 per cent rate for corporations - and wants to use those revenues to help spur the construction of 3 million homes and offer tax breaks for parents.

Ahead of a September rally on Long Island, Trump pledged that he would 'get SALT back,' suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.

The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.

Some Democrats have pushed to lift the $10,000 cap, a move many Republicans have said they oppose. Some, including Trump's former GOP primary foe Nikki Haley, have called for making the 2017 tax cuts permanent. 

Some of that notion is enshrined in Republicans' 2024 platform, although the permanence provision specifically calls out portions 'that doubled the standard deduction, expanded the Child Tax Credit, and spurred Economic Growth for all Americans.'

Harris has not said that she would try to preserve Trump-era tax cuts, which are set to run out at the end of next year. But, like Biden, she has vowed not to raise taxes for Americans who earn less than $400,000 annually.

Angling to bring back more overseas jobs and manufacturing to the US, Trump has said repeatedly that he wants higher tariffs on imported goods, and has said the idea wouldn't increase inflation. 

He has floated the idea of a universal tariff as high as 20 per cent on all imports and even higher tariffs on Chinese products and on US companies that move factory jobs overseas.

In a recent speech at the Economic Club of New York, Trump suggested that tariffs could be used to solve seemingly unrelated challenges such as the rising cost of child care in the US, as part of a broader promise that tariffs can raise trillions of dollars to fund his agenda without those costs being passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices. That's a view with which many economists disagree since tariffs directly raise the prices of purchasing goods.

Particularly as it relates to the US auto industry, it's a notion he called for again recently in Savannah, Georgia, where Trump said he'd put a 100 per cent tariff on every car imported from Mexico. 

Calling for a 'new American industrialism,' Trump suggested that the only way to avoid those charges would be for an automaker to build the cars in the US.

Harris has described Trump's ideas for tariffs as a 'sales tax' on American households that could cost a typical family roughly $4,000 annually.