Vice President Kamala Harris looks back as she walks offstage after the end of her remarks at Prince George’s Community College on August 15, 2024 in Largo, Maryland. This event is the first time President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris have appeared in public together since Biden announced he would be stepping down from running for re-election. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris released her first detailed economic policy proposal Friday, laying out how she’d like to ease rent increases, boost first-time home buyers, end grocery price gouging and bolster the child tax credit.
The Harris campaign’s announcement said the proposals, most of which would need approval from Congress, would “address some of the sharpest pain points American families are confronting and bolster their financial security.”
“Vice President Harris has made clear that building up the middle class will be a defining goal of her presidency,” the announcement stated. “She will deliver for Americans who are demanding a new way forward towards a future that lifts up all Americans so that they can not just get by, but get ahead.”
Harris campaigned later Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina, ahead of the Democratic National Convention beginning Monday, as both campaigns focus on a handful of swing states.
The economic plank of her plan seeks to curb the expenses that often come with building a family by expanding the child tax credit to the $3,600 per child that existed under the COVID-19 spending law that Democrats approved during the first months of the Biden administration. That provision has since expired.
Harris proposes increasing that credit to $6,000 for families that have children under a year old.
The maximum child tax credit is currently $2,000 per qualifying child for an individual making less than $200,000 annually or a couple filing jointly that makes less than $400,000.
The credit was doubled to $2,000 as part of Republicans’ 2018 tax overhaul. Harris’ announcement came days after Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the GOP nominee for vice president, told CBS News he’d “love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child.”
There are several qualifications to receive a child tax credit, including that the child was under the age of 17 at the end of the year and that they are a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or U.S. resident alien.
The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, would expand “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,” according to the announcement.
Harris also pledged that no one making less than $400,000 annually would see an increase in new taxes, matching a promise that President Joe Biden has made throughout his time in the Oval Office.
Grocery price gouging
The proposal says that if elected, Harris would seek Congress’ passage of a law to implement a ban on “price gouging” on groceries and other food as well as establish “rules of the road” that would bar companies from “excessive profits on food and groceries.”
Rising prices on groceries have been a major pain point for consumers, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday made the case that prices are too high for American families, laying the blame for inflation at the feet of the Biden-Harris administration and insisting he’s the only person able to get prices back down.
To implement her grocery gouging plan, Harris proposes providing the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general with new authority to “impose strict new penalties” on companies that price gouge.
“Many big grocery chains that have seen production costs level off have nevertheless kept prices high and have seen their highest profits in two decades,” the proposal states. “While some food companies have passed along these savings, others still have not.”
“Price fluctuations are normal in free markets, but Vice President Harris recognizes there is a big difference between fair pricing and the excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business that Americans have seen in the food and grocery industry,” it says.
A Harris administration would also address “unfair mergers and acquisitions” that can contribute to higher prices on food and groceries, the Harris plan says.
Expansion of drug pricing controls
Harris hopes to expand a price ceiling for insulin that Democrats established in their signature climate change, health care and tax package known as the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA.
That section of the law, which only applies to Medicare, caps the price of insulin per month at $35. Harris’ proposal looks to expand that to “everyone” while setting the maximum out-of-pocket cost for other prescriptions at $2,000.
The plan would increase the pace that Medicare is allowed to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.
“Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will also work with states to cancel medical debt for millions of Americans and to help them avoid accumulating such debt in the future, because no one should go bankrupt just because they had the misfortune of becoming sick or hurt,” according to the proposal.
Boosting home building
The economic plan released Friday includes numerous changes that could ease the increasing costs of renting and purchasing a home for the first time.
Harris would seek to bolster home building throughout the country by 3 million units during the next four years by taking “down barriers that stand in the way of building new housing, including at the state and local levels.”
A Harris-Walz administration would call on Congress to create a tax incentive for construction companies that build “starter homes” that would then be sold to first-time home buyers.
The announcement says the new tax incentive would “complement the Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit that encourages investment in homes that would otherwise be too costly or difficult to develop or rehabilitate.”
Harris’ proposal calls for up to $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers who have paid rent on time for at least two years.
The proposal says that if implemented, the down payment financial aid would go out to more than 4 million people over four years.
Harris also pressed lawmakers to address the rising cost of rent by approving two bills that have been introduced in Congress, but haven’t gained any ground.
One bill would reduce the incentive for large firms to buy more than 50 single-family rental homes. The legislation would bar those companies “from deducting interest or depreciation on those properties,” according to a summary of the measure.
The second rental proposal asks Congress to approve a bill that would “crack down on companies that help landlords increase rents in already high-priced markets,” according to a summary.
“Vice President Harris knows that our nation’s housing affordability crisis is making it hard for tens of millions of Americans to make ends meet while putting the American Dream of homeownership out of reach for too many working families,” the proposal states. “That’s why she will launch an urgent and comprehensive four-year plan to lower housing costs for working families and end America’s housing shortage.”
The Harris-Walz campaign also announced Friday that the ticket would hold a bus tour in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding area on Sunday, just ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
Harris; her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz; second gentleman Doug Emhoff; and first lady of Minnesota Gwen Walz will all participate in the tour of Allegheny and Beaver counties.
Trump campaign responds
Trump campaign officials hosted a call with reporters Friday afternoon to criticize many of the policy proposals in Harris’ economic plan, but declined to weigh in directly on a potential boost to the child tax credit.
“We’re going to have a number of additional policy discussions on economics. I think you’ve seen President Trump himself in a couple public events and press availabilities in just the last few days, speaking directly to his policies,” said Brian Hughes, senior communications adviser to the Trump campaign. “I think today we will focus on the rest of the discussion about, you know, Harris’ extremely liberal agenda.“
Campaign officials on the call declined to answer a separate question about how Trump proposing tariffs on certain products would impact the U.S. economy and prices.
Kevin Hassett, former senior adviser and chairman to the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, said the purpose of Friday’s call was to focus on proposals from the Harris campaign.
“I think that having a future call about tariffs and President Trump’s agenda is something that I’m sure the campaign is eager to set up,” Hassett said. “But, you know, we were instructed to focus on Kamala’s proposals today. And it seems to me that supporters of Kamala probably don’t want to talk about her proposals.”
Hassett said Harris’ economic proposals fell into one of two categories. The first, he said, were policies that Trump has already proposed, while the second category encompassed politics that don’t “make any sense at all.”
Stephen Moore, policy adviser to Trump, said that the proposals to limit price spikes on food and groceries could force some stores to go out of business, potentially increasing food instability.
He argued the proposal for up to $25,000 in down payment assistance for first time home buyers wouldn’t address the main issue preventing people from buying a home, which he said is high interest rates.
“If you were to cut taxes, deregulate the economy, produce more energy — all of those policies are deflationary, not inflationary,” Moore said. “And those are the policies that would get inflation back down to the 1 ½% to 2% rate that we had under Donald J. Trump.”
The Federal Reserve began lowering interest rates during the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to prevent the country’s economy from going into a tailspin.
The Fed has kept interest rates higher than is typical in an attempt to curb inflation that began spiking as pandemic restrictions began to ease following a widespread vaccination effort.