Conservatives and libertarians have plenty to argue about, but issues surrounding economics are not one of them. There is, after all, a reason Ronald Reagan borrowed so heavily from the mind of Milton Friedman.
According to a new study by the Cato Institute, the top nine foremost policies advocated for by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) would cost American taxpayers a pretty penny. And while many of us knew from the outset, the exact numbers are beyond staggering.
Using lower-bound estimates, the DSA agenda would raise US government spending to 57% of GDP. At the high end: 92% of GDP, higher than any comparable country in the world.
— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) August 12, 2026
Cato's @adamnmichel explains who will end up actually footing the bill.https://t.co/yNV5JVrYfy pic.twitter.com/g2zctfrDA5
Combine the DSA’s top nine policy priorities, universal healthcare, reparations, a federal jobs guarantee, housing for all, infrastructure and transit spending, green-energy investments, publicly funded retirement, paid family leave, and, of course, free college, and taxpayers could face a bill of at least $71.2 trillion over the next decade. And that is the lower-end estimate, on top of the federal government’s current financial burden.
That lower estimate translates to an additional $7.12 trillion per year in government spending, roughly doubling what the government spent in fiscal year 2025.
On the high end, the costs could reach a staggering $211.6 trillion over the next decade, which translates to roughly an additional $21.16 trillion per year. That would bring total annual federal spending to roughly four times what the government spent in 2025.
As for who pays, the DSA insists the burden would fall only on the richest Americans, a claim most people rightly find laughable. Now, the numbers show just how laughable it really is.
Even if the DSA confiscated the wealth of every wealthy American, seized every dollar of corporate profit, and maximized top income-tax rates, its plan would still fall between $29 trillion and $169 trillion short. That leaves only one remaining target: the middle class, which would be forced to shoulder the rest of the burden.
Under Cato’s estimates, closing the gap would require a top tax rate of as much as 160 percent, and would push even the 24 percent bracket to 100 percent.
This reveals one simple truth: the DSA’s plan is to promise the country the world, and figure out how to pay for it later. The epitome of a naive approach to economics.
Long before a full decade of DSA redistribution could ever be realized, capital, businesses, and wealth would flee America on a scale the country has never seen. Conservatives are fond of quoting British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.”
This study puts numbers behind that warning, showing just how quickly, and how catastrophically, that truth could be realized under the leadership of the DSA.
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