Kamala Harris will unveil a wide-ranging plan to lower costs for Americans on Friday including new tax breaks and other policies at a speech in battleground North Carolina as she seeks to burnish her credentials on the economy as she vies with former President Trump for the White House.
The sitting vice president proposed restoring the expanded $3,600 child tax credit, a crackdown on price gouging by food producers and a $25,000 down payment boost for first-time homebuyers.
Harris also says she wants to incentivize home builders to build 3 million new homes and introduce new rules on rent hikes imposed by corporate landlords.
“These bold actions will address some of the sharpest pain points American families are confronting and bolster their financial security,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.
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Joe Biden and Kamala Harris walk onstage at a campaign rally on Sunday in Maryland. Biden and Harris held the event to talk about their administration’s efforts to lower drug costs. (Getty)
It’s no surprise that Harris journeyed to Raleigh, North Carolina, to deliver the message that she hopes will resonate with swing voters.
The Tarheel State is considered one of seven battleground states that will likely determine the winner of the November election. Although Trump narrowly won North Carolina in 2020, Democrats believe demographic changes, including a rising number of college educated voters, will put it squarely in play.
Harris is calling for a broad range of tax breaks aimed at families, as well as middle- and lower-income people, proposals designed to contrast with Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.
The presumptive Democratic nominee would expand the child tax credit to up to $3,600 — and $6,000 for parents of newborn children. She wants to expand the earned income tax credit to cover more people in lower-income jobs without children.
Harris also wants to lower health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act, an important wedge issue for Democrats after Republicans have mostly thrown in the towel on a years-long futile effort to repeal the popular program known as Obamacare.
She has also embraced eliminating tax on tips and raising the minimum wage for tipped workers, proposals that Trump claims credit for proposing
Harris’ grocery pricing proposal would instruct the Federal Trade Commission to penalize “big corporations” that engage in price spikes and singles out a lack of competition in the meat-packing industry for driving up meat prices.
The speech is one of Harris’ first efforts to lay out her policy plans in the four weeks of her campaign since President Biden suspended his and handed her the baton.
She wants to take credit for some of the more popular achievements of the Biden administration while distancing herself from Biden’s poor approval ratings on his handling of the economy and particularly inflation.
Trump has responded by attacking Harris as a “communist” who wants to impose price controls like Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. His running mate JD Vance took a different tack, accusing Harris of cribbing Trump’s ideas to pander with voters.
“No one should be fooled by the fake campaign copying President Trump’s vision,” Vance tweeted.
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