On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to fight big corporations and cut spending on essentials like food, shelter and child-rearing during her first major policy address in North Carolina.
Harris praised the Biden Administration’s efforts, which has made progress given the Covid economy it succeeded former President Donald Trump, but is not enough because many Americans have yet to feel that progress in their daily lives. The proposals include efforts to fight overpricing at the grocery store, a push to build more affordable housing, reinstate an expanded tax credit for parents and lower the cost of prescription drugs, according to a briefing released by her campaign.
The Democratic presidential candidate intends to call for tax credits for building starter homes and reducing the $35 cost of insulin for all Americans and trying to lower the cost of health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Her campaign outlined its proposals before the speech, leaving key issues vague – such as lowering family incomes to qualify for the new $6,000 newborn tax deduction or what exactly would be considered “overpricing” at the grocery shop under the federal ban. Harris said she will call for the reinstatement of the $3,600 child tax credit for low- and middle-income families.
She announced her plans to create tax credits for homebuilders who build starter homes for first-time homebuyers and said she would provide a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers, promising to cut red tape and unnecessary regulatory red tape as part of that, and said she would promote innovative technology while protecting consumers.
Campaign officials did not detail exactly how Harris would pay for her spending and tax cut proposals in a release before the speech. But they said her overall plan would reduce the projected federal deficit as proposed in Biden’s latest budget.
The issues of insulin and tax credits for families face opposition from Republicans in Congress. Republicans in the Senate have stalled a provision to cap spending on insulin on the private market in 2022, and earlier this month they blocked a child tax credit bill at a much smaller amount than Harris is proposing.
She also backed President Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on Americans with incomes under $400,000, signalling that she would extend at least part of Trump’s tax breaks for low-income earners when they expire at the end of 2025.
Besides, the Vice President criticised Donald Trump’s proposal to impose new tariffs of up to 20 per cent on all imported goods, saying it would amount to a tax hike on working families, while Trump strongly defends his tariffs as a way to thwart foreign countries. The focus is on rising inflation and high prices, with voters continuing to give the former president higher marks on the economy than the new Democratic candidate.
Kamala Harris’s plan is nothing new or unique. Many of her proposals are more an expansion of policies previously proposed by Biden than a radical new beginning – a new sales presentation focused on its most popular aspects rather than a new vision.
