Happy Tuesday! Lots happening today, but before we get to it, we want to say these three words: sharks and cocaine.
Harris Blasts Trump at Her First Presidential Campaign Rally
Vice President Kamala Harris held her first rally as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Tuesday, seeking to build on the momentum she has generated in the first two days of her campaign and to draw sharp contrasts with the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump.
“I am so very honored,” Harris told a crowd in Milwaukee, “and I pledge to you I will spend the coming weeks continuing to unite our party so that we are ready to win in November.”
Harris said she would proudly put her record against Trump’s and went on to blast the former president in a way that also contrasted with President Joe Biden’s recent struggles to sharply articulate the case against the GOP nominee.
“As attorney general of California,” Harris said, “I took on one of our country’s largest for-profit colleges that was scamming students. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students. As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse. As attorney general of California, I took on the big Wall Street banks and held them accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”
Harris also criticized Trump for relying on wealthy donors and corporate backers, citing reports that he recently urged oil industry executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign and his related vow to them that he would roll back environmental regulations and save them money on taxes.
Harris told her supporters that building up the middle class “will be a defining goal of my presidency.” She then slammed the right-wing Project 2025, the 920-page policy and governing agenda put together by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has tried to distance himself from the controversial plan, but at least 140 former officials from his administration contributed to the project, according to CNN, and many of those officials would likely be part of a second Trump administration.
“Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” Harris said, urging people to read it. “America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back.”
Harris spoke Tuesday after having quickly secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to ensure she will be the party’s nominee. The Harris campaign also told reporters that she had raised more than $100 million from 1.1 million donors, with more than 60% of them new contributors.
As the party lines up behind her, the top two Democrats in Congress endorsed Harris hours before her rally. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had held off on officially backing Harris for fear of making her ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket seem like a coronation.
"When I spoke with her Sunday, she said she wanted the opportunity to win the nomination on her own, and to do so from the grassroots up, not top down,” Schumer told reporters. “We deeply respected that, Hakeem and I did. She said she would work to earn the support of our party, and boy, has she done so.”
Now as Democrats look to propel Harris forward, Biden announced he would address the nation from the Oval Office tomorrow night at 8 p.m. ET to talk about “what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people.”
On Monday, Biden had called into Harris’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware — which had been his headquarters until a day earlier — to voice his support for his vice president.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Biden said. “I’m going to be out there on the campaign with her, with Kamala. I’m going to be working like hell, both as a sitting president getting legislation passed as well as campaigning. You know, we still need to save this democracy, and Trump is still a danger to the community. He’s a danger to the nation.”
As Trump and his campaign adjust to Harris’s emergence as their likely opponent, they indicated they would seek to tie her to Biden’s policies but also label her as more liberal and radical. “The Democrats deposing one Nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio said in a memo released to the media. “Before long, Harris’ ‘honeymoon’ will end and voters will refocus on her role as Biden’s partner and co-pilot.”
The bottom line: With 104 days until the election, the attacks on Harris are ramping up, but Democrats and their new candidate are enjoying a surge in energy and excitement about a contest against Trump.
7 Proposals to Rein In the National Debt
Although it may be hard to imagine now, at some point in the not-too-distant future the 2024 election will be over and a new government will take over in Washington. No matter who is in power, the new president and Congress will quickly face some major fiscal issues, driven by the expiration at the end of 2025 of the tax cuts for individuals Republicans enacted in 2017.
Republicans are calling for the tax cuts to be extended, which the Congressional Budget Office has warned would cost some $4.6 trillion over 10 years. Democrats say they want tax cuts for low- and middle-income households to remain in place, while allowing the cuts for high-income households to expire as part of a series of changes designed to reduce the budget deficit.
The debate over taxes and revenues will inevitably touch upon the long-term trajectory of the debt, which the CBO estimates will increase significantly over the next decades in the absence of new policy, reaching record levels as a percentage of gross domestic product as soon as 2027 and then moving up from there.
On Tuesday, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation published proposals from seven think tanks across the political spectrum that address the issue of rising debt. The proposals lay out seven paths policymakers could take to prevent the debt from growing relative to the size of the economy. (The Fiscal Times is an editorially independent organization funded by the late Peter G. Peterson and his family.)
As the chart below indicates, all the proposals reduce the projected debt-to-GDP ratio by at least a third by 2054, relative to the current baseline. Most of the proposals go even further, reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio below current levels over three decades.
How do they do it? Howard Gleckman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which scored the proposals, says all of the think tanks agree that some new tax revenues are required, but there is less agreement on how much or how to raise those revenues.
The think tanks on the right — the American Action Forum (AAF), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Manhattan Institute (MI) — prefer to emphasize spending reductions to free up funding for deficit reduction. The think tanks on the left, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and those closer to the center — the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) — more typically call for more tax increases to help fill in the fiscal gap.
The think tanks agree that Social Security, which faces a funding shortfall in about a decade, is in need of reform. All of the groups provide ways to extend the program’s solvency for another 30 years, with most calling for an increase in the current cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax, which could raise between $670 billion to $1.2 trillion over 10 years. Raising the retirement age was cited by four of the think tanks, a move that could produce $121 billion in savings over 10 years.
In terms of health care, three of the think tanks called for streamlining Medicare Parts A, B and D into a single program, saving as much as $100 billion in costs. The conservative think tanks called for converting Medicare into a premium-support plan and capping costs in Medicaid on a per capita basis.
In terms of taxes, six of the groups called for raising the level of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, relative to the current baseline. The conservative groups generally held taxes below 20% of GDP, while the liberal groups pushed taxes above that level to fund more extensive social spending. The Economic Policy Institute was the most aggressive, calling for tax revenues to rise to 31.3% of GDP by 2034 — nearly twice the level described by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
The bottom line: There’s more than one way to improve the nation’s fiscal trajectory, and detailed plans have already been laid out, awaiting lawmakers’ attention. While there is widespread agreement that the federal government needs more revenues, there is likely no easy way through the politics involved in changing the tax code.
“Politics is the main obstacle to getting this done,” says The Washington Post’s editorial board. “But the Peterson report shows where Congress and the next president could realistically begin.”
Fiscal News Roundup
- Harris Packs First Rally as Trump Retools for New Opponent – Washington Post
- Harris: ‘The Path to the White House Goes Through Wisconsin’ – Associated Press
- Trump Says He Still Wants to Debate Harris but Isn’t ‘Thrilled at ABC’ – Associated Press
- AFL-CIO, Major Labor Unions Rush to Embrace Harris – Washington Post
- Harris Holds Edge Over Trump in New Reuters/Ipsos Poll – The Hill
- House GOP Leaders Urge Members: Stop Making Race Comments About Harris – Politico
- Harris’s Campaign Will Have to Contend With DEI, Culture War Attacks – Washington Post
- Trump Floated Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary, Then Denies It – Bloomberg
- Secret Service Encourages Trump Campaign to Stop Holding Outdoor Rallies – Washington Post
- Sen. Bob Menendez to Resign Next Month Following Corruption Conviction – Politico
- Florida’s Population Passes 23 Million for the First Time Due to Residents Moving From Other States – Associated Press
- Sunday Was the Hottest Day Ever Recorded on Earth, Scientists Say – Washington Post
- ‘Veep’ Creator Reminds the Internet the Show Was a Fictional Comedy – CNN
Views and Analysis
- Harris Gets a Dream Start, but the Task Ahead Is Monumental – Stephen Collinson, CNN
- Washington’s Most Powerful Interests Don’t Know Whether to Cheer Harris — or Dread Her – Megan Messerly, Politico
- How Republicans Plan to Attack Kamala Harris – Ed Kilgore, New York
- Of 49 US VPs, Only 4 Accomplished What Harris Is Attempting – Zachary B. Wolf, Renée Rigdon and Matt Stiles, CNN
- Who Is Kamala Harris? – David Dayen, American Prospect
- Kamala Harris and Her Tax Proposals: A Primer – Nikhita Airi and Margot Crandall-Hollick, Tax Policy Center
- When Harris Calls Trump a Predator, Voters Will Listen – Francis Wilkinson, Bloomberg
- With Biden Out, Vance May Be the Wrong Pick for Trump – Jamie Dettmer, Politico
- The Democrats’ Crisis Isn’t Over – Michael Kazin, Politico
- Have Immigrants Been Taking Away Our Jobs? – Paul Krugman, New York Times
- It’s Necessary to Tame the National Debt. And Surprisingly Doable – Washington Post Editorial Board