The Atlantic: Clinton Has Already Broken Her First Campaign Promise

Hillary Clinton has a pledge she likes to make on the campaign trail, one she repeated a few times during Wednesday night's final presidential debate: "I will not add a penny to the debt," reports The Washington Post.

And just like that, a would-be President Clinton has already broken her first campaign promise, according to The Atlantic.

Clinton is promising to pay for her proposed hundreds of billions in new spending by taxing the wealthy, for example. So while she may not add a penny to the spending deficit, inaction on attacking the country's near $20 trillion debt would add another $9 trillion to it over the next 10 years, The Atlantic reported.

"She had to have misspoke. The alternative would be absurd," Dean Baker, a liberal economist told The Atlantic. "Clearly, she is going to add to the debt."

So to actually make good on her campaign promise, a President Clinton and Congress would need to execute hundreds of billions in spending cuts or tax increases, neither of which Clinton is proposing.

"For a candidate to say they have a plan that wouldn't add a penny to the debt, they'd actually need a plan to save $9 trillion," Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told The Atlantic.

"She doesn't have that, and no one could actually even be expected to have that. We are going to add to the debt."

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