In her first major political speech since her nomination as Democratic vice president, Vice President Kamala Harris outlined several components of her economic policy agenda on Friday.

Harris acknowledged that while the economy as a whole has recovered well since the pandemic, “costs are still too high” and that too many people are “finding it so difficult to even make ends meet, no matter how much they work.” She said she would make lowering the cost of living and “increasing economic security for all Americans” a “top priority.”

The measures, which Harris unveiled during her speech at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh on Friday, emphasized the need to address anti-competitive practices by large companies, which Harris said have recovered from the pandemic and made record profits but kept their prices high and failed to pass on the savings to consumers.

She cited examples from various sectors, including the food and grocery industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the housing market.

As Harris announces these and other policies, many details remain unclear, including the cost and funding of the proposals and how the Democrat plans to pass and implement them while working with a Congress that will likely remain divided.

Housing assistance

Harris spoke about one of the proposals her campaign announced this week, which would provide a $25,000 down payment to first-time homebuyers who have paid their rent on time for two years, and said she would also push for legislation to crack down on corporate investors and landlords who buy properties and rent them at “extremely high” prices or, in some cases, collude to set “artificially high rent prices.”

The new down payment policy goes beyond the Biden-Harris administration’s previous proposal to make that amount available to only 400,000 first-time homebuyers. The Harris campaign said it would simplify and expand that plan by giving an average of $25,000 to all eligible first-time homebuyers and ensuring that all first-time homebuyers are covered.

The campaign estimated that over four million first-time home buyers would receive significant down payment assistance over four years.

Harris called for the construction of three million new homes while urging Congress to pass legislation to prevent large investors from buying homes in bulk by eliminating existing tax breaks and to crack down on commercial landlords who set their prices in other ways.

Jim Parrott, nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and former senior adviser to the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama, Is advises the Harris campaign on housing policy. He told The News & Observer that while the down payment Harris supports could help many homebuyers, it is critical to address the housing shortage first, otherwise “you’re probably just driving up housing prices and not solving your affordability problems.”

Price gouging

Harris also called for a federal ban on alleged price gouging on food and groceries. In her campaign, she announced that she would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general more powers to investigate and punish companies.

Several states have laws against excessive price increases by companies, but the Harris team pointed out that there is no such law at the federal level.

The Trump camp, in its response to Harris’ plan on Friday, questioned whether “corporate greed” was a significant factor in price increases, pointing to a study conducted in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that found that corporate price gouging was not a “major driver of the recent rise and subsequent decline in inflation.”

The study was “a clear refutation of the theory that corporate greed for profit was a major cause of higher prices,” Reuters reported at the time.

Child allowances and medication costs

Other policy proposals Harris mentioned in her speech in Raleigh include:

▪ Restored the expanded child tax credit, which provided families with up to $3,600 per child;

▪ Providing an even higher tax credit of $6,000 for families with newborns;

▪ Cap insulin costs at $35 and prescription drug copayments at $2,000 for all Americans;

▪ Work with states to cancel additional medical debt.

Getting the guidelines through Congress

Parrott said it will be “very important” for a potential Harris administration to sit down with Congress and determine how those policies should be funded. But he added that it was no surprise that the campaign would focus on the policies Harris wants to pursue, rather than listing “how that will be funded.”

In a press release, the Trump campaign criticized Harris’ economic plan, saying she was pursuing policy solutions that had repeatedly failed to lower prices and improve the affordability of life in the past.

“It cannot be overstated how devastating the idea is of letting bureaucrats in Washington, DC dictate food prices in cities, suburbs and rural communities across the country – destroying the necessary supply and demand signals of the free market and ultimately leading to higher prices for consumers,” the campaign says.

Although Republicans were quick to criticize Harris’s political platform as full of misguided economic theses, the two major campaign teams appear to agree on some areas.

Former President Donald Trump, for example, has been calling for the elimination of the tip tax since he proposed the idea at a rally in Las Vegas in June. Harris also expressed her support for the elimination of the tip tax at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, after which Trump accused her of copying him.

The Harris team said their proposal would also include a call for Congress to raise the minimum wage, CNN reported.

There also appears to be cross-party agreement on the issue of expanding the child tax credit: US Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, said on Sunday that the tax credit should be more than doubled to $5,000 and “apply to all American families,” Bloomberg reported.

It is not clear whether Trump shares this view.

Under the dome

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