US Budget Watch 2020
Too often, election campaigns are about telling voters what they want to hear rather than what they need to know. US Budget Watch 2020 will bring information and accountability to the 2020 presidential campaign by analyzing candidates' proposals, factchecking their claims, and scoring the fiscal cost of their agendas.
By injecting an impartial, fact-based approach into the national conversation, US Budget Watch 2020 will help voters to better understand the implications of the candidates' policies and encourage candidates to be transparent in showing how their promises will ultimately be paid for.
This effort had a measurable impact in the 2016 campaign, where our work was cited thousands of times by the media – including in several presidential debates – as an independent and nonpartisan resource for fiscal and economic facts. This project has released dozens of analyses over the past four election cycles, including a recent analysis of the $4.7 trillion of new debt President Trump has signed into law, a comparison of the Trump and Clinton proposals and an analysis of Trump’s health plan in 2016, and a comparison of the top four GOP primary candidates in 2012, and a series of papers comparing the candidates in the 2008 election.
We will be live factchecking primary debates using the Twitter hashtag #USBW2020.
Our work related to the 2020 campaign is here:
- Primary Care: Estimating Leading Democratic Candidates’ Health Plans
- After the 2020 Election, Fiscal Challenges Await
- President Trump has Signed $4.7 Trillion of Debt into Law
- Elizabeth Warren's Higher Education Plan, a policy explainer
- Kamala Harris's LIFT the Middle Class Act, a policy explainer
- Bernie Sanders's Social Security Expansion Act, a policy explainer
- Cory Booker's "Baby Bonds" Plan, a policy explainer
- Joe Biden's Preschool and K-12 Education Plan, a policy explainer
- Have We Spent Trillions on Wars?, a factcheck of a claim by Senator Sanders
- Are There $1.6 Trillion in Tax Loopholes?, a factcheck of a claim by Vice President Biden
- Would a 10% VAT Pay for a $1,000 per Month UBI?, a factcheck of a claim by Andrew Yang
- Would Medicare for All Require a Middle-Class Tax Hike?
- Fact Checking Medicare for All Claims from the Fourth Democratic Primary Debate
- US Budget Watch 2020 Will Hold Candidates Accountable for Their Fiscal Promises
Some of our notable prior work is:
- Promises and Price Tags (2016), our comprehensive scores of the 2016 general election presidential candidates
- Analysis of the Sanders Single-Payer Offsets (2016), our score of the revenue raised by Senator Sanders's 2016 Medicare For All plan
- Primary Numbers (2012), our estimates of the four major candidates in the Republican primary
- Analysis of Donald Trump's Health Care Plan (2016)
- How Much Will Medicare for All Cost?
- Fiscal FactCheck: Could Negotiating Medicare Drug Prices Save $300 Billion Per Year?
- Fiscal FactCheck: Is President Trump's Tax Cut the Largest in History?
- Sanders Releases Single-Payer Bill (2017)
In the coming months, we will be explaining and analyzing policies proposed by presidential candidates and fact checking their claims. If you have a claim you want checked or policy explained, please contact us at info@crfb.org.