Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday unveiled the economic policies she would enact in her first 100 days in office — and they’re largely based on handouts.
She advocates for providing free cash to those buying a home for the first time, as well as for lower- and middle-income families having children, in addition to her controversial plan to fix prices on groceries.
The revelation is her first big policy announcement since replacing President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket as the 81-year-old incumbent and the White House have said there is “no daylight” between his and her policies.
But some of Harris’ policies would be the first of their kind — including setting price limits on groceries at the federal level, which the Trump campaign was quick to label a Communist “Maduro plan.”
Many of her economic policies also include tax breaks and a large dole of cash — $25,000 — for those buying a home for the first time, specifically first-generation homeowners.
Lowering grocery costs by banning ‘price gouging’
Harris’ plan to reduce grocery costs includes working with Congress to ban “price gouging,” or stopping sellers from pricing their products excessively.
It would be the first time the US has ever had a federal price-gouging ban.
She also vowed in her campaign rollout to “set clear rules of the road” so big corporations don’t take advantage of consumers and “secure new authority for the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and impose strict new penalties on companies that break the rules,” along with directing her administration to tackle grocery oligopolies.
Voters consistently rate the economy as their top priority in choosing their candidate in November and Donald Trump’s campaign has stressed that Harris could have battled high prices while she was in office as VP.
Trump’s campaign accused her of proposing a policy that is more “third-world” than American.
Harris “is set to unveil a government price fixing scheme today that’s more reminiscent of a third-world regime than the United States,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement, adding that socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “would be proud of Comrade Kamala.”
Housing affordability
Harris promised to work toward construction of 3 million new homes to “end the housing shortage” within a four-year time frame.
To do this, her campaign said, she will offer a first-ever tax incentive to people building starter homes, give a tax incentive to businesses that build affordable rental housing and “cut red tape and needless bureaucracy.”
She also proposed a first-ever average $25,000 down payment support for first-ever homeowners, with a special emphasis on first-generation homeowners.
Additionally, she vowed to enact a new federal fund to boost housing construction. The whopping $40 billion innovation fund would be double the current Biden-Harris innovative fund, which also incentivizes local governments to find housing solutions.
The Harris fund would also “go further to support innovative methods of construction financing, and empower developers and homebuilders to design and build rental and housing solutions that are affordable — with one condition: they must show they will deliver results,” her campaign said.
Child-rearing incentives
The Harris campaign is running on expanding the Child Tax Credit to give middle-income and lower-income families up to $6,000 in tax breaks for families who have children in their first year of life.
The campaign also said Harris will fight to restore Biden’s American Rescue Plan extended Child Tax Credit that gives up to $3,600 per child.
For those without children, Harris’ campaign said, she would expand the “Earned Income Tax Credit to cover individuals and couples in lower-income jobs who aren’t raising a child in their home, cutting their taxes by up to $1,500.”
Trump VP pick Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) has also floated the idea of a child tax credit of up to $5,000 for all American families, not just middle- and lower-income.
Lowering prescription drug costs
Harris vowed to work with her VP pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, to ask states “to cancel medical debt for millions of Americans and to help them avoid accumulating such debt in the future.”
She also wants to cap insulin costs at $35 and out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 for everyone, not just seniors, and “accelerate the speed of Medicare negotiations over prescription drugs.”
Harris is expected to make remarks about her policies in North Carolina on Friday afternoon.
Kamala Harris’ ‘Soviet-style’ grocery price plan has ‘no upside’ and will likely spark worst shortages since 1970s: economists
There’s “no upside” to Vice President Kamala Harris’ “Soviet-style” plan to federally set grocery prices, which she is due to unveil Friday afternoon at a rally in North Carolina — and it would likely lead to the worst supply shortages since the 1970s, economists told The Post.
The policy proposals are not only “extraordinarily vague” and addressing an “economic non-problem” — but also appear to be “straight out of a five-year plan” of a Chairman Mao or Joseph Stalin-like figure, economists told The Post.
“Who exactly is going to decide what a fair price is for eggs or bread or cereal?” asked Brian Riedl, a senior economic fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “Is the federal government going to come up with a Soviet-style menu of what grocery stores can charge without being punished by the state?”
“Everyone who lived through or studied the 1970s knows price controls are disastrous because they lead to shortages,” Riedl told The Post. “Demand far outstrips supply. … This is why you had gas lines.”
While the price controls could in the short term be “moderately disinflationary,” Riedl added, Harris’ other policies, such as shelling out $25,000 in down payments for any first-time home buyers, would be “absolutely inflationary.”