CAROL COSTELLO (HOST): CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans has the bottom line on the Trump tax plan.
CHRISTINE ROMANS: It's a whole category of impossible math when you look at tax plans of candidates because, Carol, it's totally aspirational. This is candidates saying what they would like to do if everything were perfect, but they can't do it because this just couldn't happen. The Tax Policy Center, that is from the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, the middle-of-the-road non-partisan tax scorer, found that Donald Trump's plan, the reality check, he says no deficit, no, the Tax Policy Center says it would add $10 trillion in deficits the first 10 years, another $15 trillion in the next decade after that. So it would explode -- explode the deficit, and the national debt most likely. He would have to cut so much defense spending and so much spending out of the budget, he has Medicare and Social Security are off limits. It just isn't quite possible to be able to balance that.
So here's what he's promising. And this is what is the populist appeal of his plan. He's promising tax cuts for everyone, Carol. He's promising millions of American families who are poor would pay no taxes. He's saying the middle class would have a five percent savings on their tax bill. The top 0.1 percent would have 19 percent savings on their tax bill. Everyone would pay lower taxes, but somehow you have to pay for it. So this is clearly, clearly a starting point for this candidate. You also have to go through a little thing called Congress when you want to try to change the tax structure and all that, when you have tax cuts you'd like to push through. This was a four-page plan that came out in September, and the scorers have kind of been going over it, trying to figure out how to make it work.
COSTELLO: But couldn't he just say there's a lot of government waste and government programs we don't need and start cutting out federal departments?
ROMANS: Government waste alone can't get you to those kinds of numbers.
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ROMANS: This is familiar territory. We've seen these kinds of plans before from candidates that don't work out.
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ROMANS: The Tax Policy Center is saying it is impossible. Everyone would get a tax cut, rich people would get the biggest tax cut, and you'd have to figure out how to pay for it.
