Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will release more information about her economic agenda on Wednesday after critics slammed her in August for releasing Soviet-style proposals, three people with knowledge of the matter told the Washington Post.
Harris faces a conundrum on the economy and, in particular, on soaring costs, which have increased about 20 percent across the board since she took power in 2021.
Harris cannot campaign on the reduction of soaring costs without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but she must tout the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.
CNN’s Dana Bash exposed Harris’s conundrum during her first pre-taped interview. Harris owned the Biden-Harris administration’s economic record while she simultaneously blamed Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump for it. The contradiction was stark, producing an outcome that forced Harris to tout her administration’s policies to validate her candidacy all while she undermined her record and her candidacy.
Nevertheless, Harris must propose an economic agenda. Harris said in August that she would implement price controls to tamp down alleged price gouging that followed inflation fueled by the administration’s spending.
Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe the Biden-Harris administration’s policies have either hurt or had no impact on inflation, a Monmouth University poll found in June.
The Post speculated on what the new plans could include:
With days until her first debate with former president Donald Trump, Harris is aiming to draw a contrast with the GOP nominee’s calls for a lower corporate tax rate, the people said. Advisers to the campaign have also discussed including plans to bolster the safety net, such as through child-care or paid leave expansions, alongside tax proposals, although it is unclear whether those or other policies will be in Wednesday’s announcement. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe details not yet made public.
The plans will help bring Harris’s economic policy vision into focus as her team tries to assemble a presidential campaign at a breakneck pace since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Harris has thus far largely called for preserving the overall direction of Biden’s policies, which have embraced a more aggressive role for federal intervention in the economy than his recent Democratic predecessors supported. Her first set of economic policy proposals, released last month, struck a populist tone, calling for major new housing subsidies, a $6,000 child benefit for newborns and the first federal ban on price gouging in the grocery and food sectors.
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It is unclear whether the upcoming policy announcement will detail Harris’s overall vision for the nation’s tax code. The Harris campaign has previously told reporters that it supports the roughly $5 trillion in tax plans outlined in the White House budget. Some outside advisers to the campaign have called for Harris to include versions of the billionaire tax and higher tax on corporations previously endorsed by Biden.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.