An adviser to Donald Trump's campaign, Sam Clovis, suggested at an event hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation on Wednesday that the presumptive GOP nominee's policies would lead to a $4.5 trillion to $7 trillion surplus over a decade — a number not in line with the $10 trillion estimate from the Tax Foundation,
The Hill reports.
While the group confirmed that they used "dynamic scoring" to come up with the $10 trillion figure, Tax Foundation Director of Federal Projects Kyle Pomerleau noted that the estimate is higher when economic growth is considered.
But Clovis disputed that the "dynamic scoring" and creation of additional economic growth only creates a "more manageable number."
Adding to his projection, Clovis noted that although Trump has repeatedly stated he will not touch Medicare and Social Security benefits, once a Trump administration is in place for a while, this may not be the case.
Initially Trump will not make changes to entitlements, but eventually "we will start to take a look at all the programs, including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, we'll take a hard look at those, to start seeing what we can do in a bipartisan way to affect that," he said.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, however, defended the national campaign's co-chairman's statements to the Wall Street Journal noting that Clovis wasn't suggesting trump would make cuts to entitlement programs.
"I read his statements as though we need to examine budgetary discipline to protect programs like Social Security and Medicare, which is exactly what Mr. Trump intends to do," she said.
According to The Hill, Trump said "he would negotiate with Congress on taxes and is open to a top individual rate that is higher than the 25 percent rate proposed in his official tax plan."
Clovis added that although Trump released a tax proposal, the plan "is not going to be the hill we're going to die on." Clovis continued that the current released plan is just a starting point for discussion.
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