Barack Obama’s tax plan will either raise $262 billion over the next 10 years or increase the national debt by $2.7 trillion. John McCain would add either $615 billion or $3.6 trillion to the debt.
What’s going on? Don’t everyone turn your computer off at once, but we need to talk about budget baselines.

We have updated our preliminary estimates of the revenue effects of the candidates’ tax plans. Our estimate for the ten-year revenue change compared with current law from Senator Obama’s plan is identical to that in our original study—a $2.7 trillion revenue loss. Our updated projection for Senator McCain’s plan shows a revenue loss of $3.6 trillion instead of $3.7 trillion. With interest costs, Obama would add $3.3 trillion to the national debt, while McCain would increase the debt by $4.3 trillion.