Kamala Harris Rolls Out More of Her Policy Agenda

Kamala Harris Rolls Out More of Her Policy Agenda

Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey
Monday, September 9, 2024

Happy Monday!

We’re just one day away from the debate that could change the shape of the presidential race — the most significant faceoff since, well, the June debate that led to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race. Now, as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are set to meet in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, they are essentially tied in national polling. In a new survey by The New York Times and Siena College, Trump holds a one-point lead, 48% to 47%, in a head-to-head matchup, well within the roughly 3-percentage point margin of error. CBS News/YouGov polling in key Electoral College battleground states finds that Harris is slightly ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin and the candidates are tied in Pennsylvania. The race is a toss-up, and tomorrow night’s debate gives both candidates their best chance to change that.

Here what else you should know.

Harris Rolls Out More of Her Policy Agenda Ahead of Debate

Vice President Kamala Harris outlined a policy platform on her campaign website this past weekend, filling in some of the details of how she proposes to address specific issues including taxes, the economy, healthcare and foreign policy. The release comes just days before the Democratic candidate faces off against her Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, in a debate Tuesday night.

Harris has scrambled to define her campaign since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on July 21. In many cases, she has adopted the platform laid out by the man she hopes to succeed in the White House, but she has also sought to put her own stamp on key issues such as corporate tax rates and housing assistance, even as she has moved away from some of the more liberal ideas such as Medicare for All that she embraced during her run for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

The platform outline is broken into four sections — economy, personal rights, public safety and foreign policy — each of which includes a comparison to what it calls “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda,” a reference to an in-depth policy report created by the conservative Heritage Foundation for Trump to follow if he wins the election, although Trump has sought to distance himself from that effort.

The economy section on Harris’s website provides the most detail, with 10 specific policy prescriptions, some of which she has already discussed. Harris says she wants to cut taxes for 100 million working- and middle-class Americans by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, while raising taxes on the wealthiest. She proposes to provide first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 to help with down payments, and to give new tax breaks to startup businesses and small business owners.

Without providing much by way of details, Harris also says she wants to lower child care costs, ban corporate price gouging on groceries, raise the minimum wage and tackle the climate crisis while lowering energy prices.

Comparing her economic platform to her opponent’s, Harris says her “lowering costs agenda is a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to jack up prices, weaken the middle class, cut Social Security and Medicare, eliminate the Department of Education and preschool programs like Head Start, and end the Affordable Care Act.”

Voters still learning: Some undecided voters say they want to hear more about what Harris proposes to do in the White House. In the New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,695 likely voters released Sunday, 28% of respondents said they need to know more about Harris, compared to just 9% who said the same about Trump. Two-thirds of those wanting to learn more about Harris said they were specifically interested in her policies.

Some supporters say Harris is trying to walk a line between policies that are broadly popular and policies that are realistic, although her message may not be getting through to voters. “I think she’s not getting enough credit for being an astute technocrat,” Ben Harris, a senior Treasury Department official under Biden, told The Washington Post. “She’s a combination of populist concerns and a healthy dose of centrism, while trying to be fairly fiscally conservative and realistic by keeping her plans targeted.”

Critics, meanwhile, say the Harris agenda threatens to destroy the American economy. Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, attacked the Harris platform at some length on social media, claiming that it would fail to help ordinary Americans. A Trump campaign spokesperson said Harris’s policies “rival some of the most socialist and authoritarian models from world history.” And Newt Gingrich, the fire-breathing former speaker of the House who now serves as an adviser to Trump, said Harris is just trying to cover her tracks. “It’s not complicated: You have a San Francisco radical who believes in big government socialism, who has a 3-and-a-half-year record of ruining the economy,” he told the Post. “Her consultants have told her she has to move to the middle, so she’s trying to figure out things to do that somehow would make it work better.”

The bottom line: Harris has provided more details on her agenda, blunting accusations that she is trying to win the presidency without telling voters where she stands. But it’s not yet clear whether the effort will be enough to convince undecided voters that she is offering a viable alternative to Trump — or a change from Biden.

Congress Is Back, with Little Time to Avert a Shutdown

Congress is back after a six-week summer break; it’s been 46 days since the House last held a roll call vote. Lawmakers now have just a few weeks to avert a government shutdown when current federal funding expires at the end of the month.

The House is set to vote this week on a partisan Republican bill that would extend funding through March 28 and require proof of citizenship from people registering to vote in federal elections. Democrats have made clear that the GOP funding plan isn’t going anywhere, and the voting legislation is cynical and unnecessary because it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. The White House on Monday said that the president would veto the bill if it reaches his desk.

“Instead of working in a bipartisan manner to keep the Government open and provide emergency funding for disaster needs, House Republicans have chosen brinksmanship,” the Office of Management and Budget said. “This continuing resolution (CR) would place agencies at insufficiently low levels—both for defense and non-defense—for a full six months, rather than providing a short-term stopgap to provide the Congress more time to work on full-year bills. CRs are the antithesis to an effective government that serves the American people and should always be as short as possible to allow work on full year bills.”

Both the White House and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are warning that a lengthy stopgap would hurt the military, degrade readiness and erode the U.S. advantage relative to China, among a host of other concerns.

Democratic congressional leaders also came out against the GOP bill. “Speaker Johnson is making the same mistake as former Speaker McCarthy did a year ago, by wasting precious time catering to the hard MAGA right,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray said in a joint statement on Friday. “If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands.”

In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Schumer said the Senate would look to avoid a “pointless and painful” shutdown by passing a bill without “poison pills or Republican extremism.”

Republican leaders also face some opposition from their own members, at least four of whom have publicly come out against the bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News that he believes the House will be able to pass the legislation. Asked what his fallback position is, he reportedly said, “There is no fallback position. This is a righteous fight.”

The bottom line: Johnson is also fighting to keep his job and avoid a rebellion from fellow Republicans who want him to play hardball with Democrats. “Johnson has two choices: Lean into conservative priorities and risk chaos weeks before the election, or work on a bipartisan basis to keep the government running, likely angering his right flank,” Politico reports. “Johnson has opted for the former, at least as his opening move.”

But it’s hard to see how this plan does anything more than kick off a fight that takes up time before the deadline at the end of the month — and test the nerves of those in both parties who want to avoid a shutdown.

Number of the Day: 60%

In the New York Times/Siena College poll, 60% of likely voters say they have heard a lot or some about Project 2025, the conservative agenda for the next Republican administration developed by the Heritage Foundation and Trump allies. Just 23% said they hadn’t heard about it at all.

Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, while Harris and Democrats have used it to warn about what he and his right-wing allies would do if given a second term. Of those in the new poll who have heard about the project, 63% said they oppose it compared to just 15% who support it. And 71% said that, despite Trump’s efforts to separate himself from the project, 71% of those who have heard of it expect him to try to enact some or most of the policies it contains.

RIP, James Earl Jones. The legendary actor died Monday at age 93. Send your feedback to yrosenberg@thefiscaltimes.com.

Fiscal News Roundup

Views and Analysis