Kamala Harris isn’t wasting any time getting her views on the economy — one of voters’ top concerns in this year’s presidential election — into the spotlight.
In her first campaign rally since US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, the vice president hit on themes often emphasised by the current administration, such as supporting the middle class and workers, and investing in the care economy.
The remarks suggest her economic platform will build on Biden’s, but Harris also has her own track record from her time as a US senator, California’s attorney general, and her own 2020 presidential run.
Here’s a sampling of her economic-policy ideas, based on public interviews, remarks and speeches from earlier in her career:
Middle class mantra
As vice president, Harris has been a standard bearer for the Biden administration’s mantra of “grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up.” Should she win in November, Harris vowed to keep the White House focused on policies aimed at benefiting the middle class — and working Americans in particular.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said at a campaign rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
Harris has touted the administration’s major legislative victories on infrastructure, combating climate change and building up a domestic semiconductor industry. She’s also highlighted policies meant to support American consumers directly, including a crackdown on so-called junk fees and measures to boost housing affordability.
“We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead,” she said Tuesday.
Harris often strikes a populist tone in her economic messaging while positioning herself as willing to go up against big business.
During her tenure as California attorney general, Harris targeted large US banks over their foreclosure and mortgage-servicing practices, securing an $18 billion settlement for the state’s homeowners in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
“This issue has never been about anything other than allowing homeowners, hard-working people, to be able to stay in their homes,” Harris said while announcing the settlement at a press conference in 2012.
“We were very determined to make sure that California, the hardest hit in the country, would receive its fair share.”
Inflation
Elevated inflation took a toll on Biden’s approval ratings and worries about the economy continue to rank highly on Americans’ list of electoral concerns.
To assuage voters, Harris has touted inflation’s relatively quick retreat from multi-decade highs while highlighting the Biden-era’s strong labour market, with continued robust job creation and an unemployment rate near historic lows.
She has also pointed to elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill Democrats pushed through in 2022 that cut prescription-drug costs for seniors to argue the administration is working to reduce price pressures for families.
Republicans, meanwhile, have blamed Biden’s policies for inflation’s surge and are already seeking to shift that blame to Harris as her campaign ramps up.
Harris “has been the architect of many of President Biden’s worst failures,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on Tuesday. The Louisiana congressman said American families “are struggling under the weight of this radical Biden-Harris administration that’s led to record inflation, higher costs at the grocery store, at the gas station, discord all around the world.”
Care economy
Since launching her campaign just days ago, Harris has reupped a pledge to fight for affordable health care, child care and paid family leave, which she argues is a benefit to the economy overall and women in particular.
“Studies have shown that when women receive the leave they need, they are more likely, then, to stay in the workforce, which means a stronger economy, raising wages for workers overall, and, by the way, raising profits for companies overall,” Harris said in February 2023.
During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris proposed a sweeping paid family and medical leave plan that would have required US employers to offer up to six months of leave to both private-sector and government workers.
Taxes
As a US senator, Harris proposed legislation that would have established a new tax credit for low-income Americans. An analysis from the Tax Policy Centre found the measure would have been especially beneficial for households in the lowest and second quintile of the income distribution.
In 2019, while campaigning for president, Harris proposed taxing “Wall Street stock trades at 0,2 percent, bond trades at 0,1 percent, and derivative transactions at 0,002 percent” as a pay-for in a larger “Medicare for All” plan.
She also proposed taxing capital gains as ordinary income and bolstering the estate tax, among other plans, according to the Tax Policy Centre.
More recently, she criticised Republican candidate Donald Trump’s record on taxes, arguing that when he was president he “gave huge tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and made working families pay the cost.”
Labour love
Harris and the Biden administration have emphatically identified as pro-union, characterising organised labour as key to workers’ rights.
“When union wages go up, everyone’s wages go up,” Harris said in June.
“When union workplaces are more safe, all workplaces are more safe. When unions are strong, America is strong.”
Harris has praised a rule finalised by the administration to update laws governing how workers on federal construction projects are paid, saying the changes would foster fairer wages for union workers and others.
The rule received criticism from Republicans and some construction-industry groups, and has faced legal setbacks.
In her remarks on Tuesday Harris said every worker should have “the freedom to join a union.”
Major labour groups, including the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union, have expressed support for Harris’ presidential bid. — Bloomberg.
