The leading Democratic candidates for president have each made dozens of policy promises to voters over the past year as they campaigned for the opportunity to challenge President Trump in November. With the Iowa caucuses taking place next week, now is the right time to evaluate how these proposals add up: which candidates have given voters a credible agenda for enacting progressive change, and which have not? Although all four of the top-polling candidates offer a dramatic departure from the Trump administration’s agenda of cutting taxes for the rich, slashing public investment, and undermining health-care coverage for millions of Americans, a new analysis from the Progressive Policy Institute’s Center for Funding America’s Future finds that some are more credible than others.
PPI’s analysis determined both how candidates would pay for their new spending proposals and what proportion of those proposals were dedicated to investments in education, infrastructure, and scientific research that lay the foundation for long-term economic growth. Real federal spending on these public investments has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1970s, and absent a dramatic course correction, the federal government will soon be spending more than twice as much on interest payments as it does on all three of these priorities combined. A credible progressive agenda would pair robust public investment with the fiscal foresight to secure those investments for generations.
Read the full analysis here.