US Budget Watch 2020

Too often, election campaigns are about telling voters what they want to hear rather than what they need to know. US Budget Watch 2020 will bring information and accountability to the 2020 presidential campaign by analyzing candidates' proposals, factchecking their claims, and scoring the fiscal cost of their agendas.

By injecting an impartial, fact-based approach into the national conversation, US Budget Watch 2020 will help voters to better understand the implications of the candidates' policies and encourage candidates to be transparent in showing how their promises will ultimately be paid for.

This effort had a measurable impact in the 2016 campaign, where our work was cited thousands of times by the media – including in several presidential debates – as an independent and nonpartisan resource for fiscal and economic facts. This project has released dozens of analyses over the past four election cycles, including a recent analysis of the $4.7 trillion of new debt President Trump has signed into law, a comparison of the Trump and Clinton proposals and an analysis of Trump’s health plan in 2016, and a comparison of the top four GOP primary candidates in 2012, and a series of papers comparing the candidates in the 2008 election. 

We will be live factchecking primary debates using the Twitter hashtag #USBW2020.

2020 Presidential Campaign Budget Watch Resources

Notable Prior Budget Watch Work

In the coming months, we will be explaining and analyzing policies proposed by presidential candidates and fact checking their claims. If you have a claim you want checked or policy explained, please contact us at info@crfb.org.