Photo: Stephanie Scarbrough Pool via Agence France-Presse Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves to the crowd as she boards a plane at Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport in Westfield, Massachusetts, on July 27.
Josh Boak – Associated Press in Washington
Published at 17:49
- United States
Democratic presidential frontrunner Kamala Harris’s economic plan may represent a tremendous opportunity for her, but also a huge risk.
Shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race a week ago, Harris began crafting her own economic narrative, focusing on ending child poverty, boosting unions, cutting health care and child care costs, and protecting “dignity” in retirement.
She didn’t mention the word “inflation” once in her speeches in Wisconsin, Indiana, or Texas.
Inflation has haunted Joe Biden’s administration, forcing him to acknowledge voters’ woes over rising food, gas, housing and auto costs time and again.
Kamala Harris is putting a higher priority on what she thinks might happen.
“In our vision of the future, we envision a place where every person has the opportunity not just to get ahead, but to get ahead — a future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every senior can retire with dignity and where every worker has the freedom to join a union,” Harris told the American Federation of Teachers on Thursday.
But Republicans have moved quickly to try to blame Harris for the inflation they blamed until recently on Joe Biden. They highlight the cumulative effect of high prices under the Democratic administration.
Data from the Labor Department shows that consumer prices have increased 19.2% since President Biden took office, while the average hourly wage has increased 16.9%.
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Republican Party leaders openly claim that Kamala Harris contributed to inflation without specifying how, other than by being vice president.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000“Vice President Harris is responsible for the record of this administration,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. “Her fingerprints are all over the failure that was the last four years.”
Past and present officials who have worked with Harris said in interviews that the inflation criticism is not expected to stick with her because for many voters she represents a new voice after nearly eight years of Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
Some of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss policy matters publicly, said Harris would likely stay in line with Biden’s 2025 budget proposal and his plan to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, up from 21 percent set by Trump in his 2017 tax overhaul.
Her emergence as the Democratic nominee has been accompanied by positive economic news.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the economy grew 2.8 percent annually in the second quarter. On Friday, he reported that personal consumption inflation had eased to 2.5% from a year earlier, as financial markets now expect the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate in September.
Those who have known Kamala Harris for years said her work as a California prosecutor put a sense of fairness at the heart of her economic policy ideas.
“She's a capitalist at heart — she wants businesses to thrive,” said Yasmin Nelson, a former senior adviser to the woman.
“But she recognizes that the scales have tipped in their favor under the Trump administration. According to her vision, she wants to level the playing field.”
Republican Critics
Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, Republican of Ohio, are working to portray Kamala Harris as more liberal than Mr Biden, suggesting that the former California senator would further restrict the use of fossil fuels by favor of solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
Mr. Trump, at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, called his opponent “the most incompetent and left-wing vice president in American history.”
Mr. Vance attacked his policies in an interview Friday on SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly show.
“We can’t let those who are going to destroy the American manufacturing and energy economy take the reins of power,” he said. “It’s going to be much worse if you have someone even more liberal than Biden.” »
The Trump campaign quickly rehashed Harris’s statements following her short-lived campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, when she told CNN that she supported bans on plastic straws, offshore oil drilling and fracking for oil and gas, a controversial position in Pennsylvania.
The Harris campaign has said it does not support a ban on fracking. During the 2020 vice presidential debate, it repeatedly stressed that Joe Biden would not end fracking.