“Despite her new attempt to rebrand herself as an independently-minded leader, Harris is a wolf in sheep’s skin that will destroy economic freedom and push the economy into full blown Socialism. We must not believe her lies” – David McIntosh, President, Club for Growth Action
Vice President Harris’ record as a candidate and Vice President is radically to the left. As much as she tries to offer “new” ideas to pander to undecided voters, her record is clear. As a Presidential Candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President, she ran on an openly socialist platform which included:
- $10 trillion in Green New Deal giveaways to unreliable, intermittent and expensive energy sources
- A full government takeover of healthcare through adoption of “Medicare-for-All” that would ration care for seniors and eliminate private insurance
- Price controls on prescription drugs that will significantly restrict access to new treatments
- Student loan bailouts for wealthy college graduates paid for by working class taxpayers
- A total ban on fracking, threatening millions of jobs
- Radical infringements on the Second Amendment through unconstitutional executive action
- Fully supporting efforts to defund the police
As Vice President, she has championed the far-left agenda of the Biden-Harris Administration, including:
- Casting the tie breaking vote for the inflationary American Rescue Plan, which pushed inflation to the highest level in 40 years.
- Casting the tie breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, forcing taxpayers to subsidize $1.2 trillion in giveaways to inefficient, unreliable and expensive energy sources, raising taxes by $324 billion, subjecting the middle class to IRS audits, and restricting access to life-saving medicines for seniors
- Overseeing the worst border crisis in a generation as the Biden-Harris Administration “Border Czar” in her role to, as noted by President Biden, “…lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle… in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”
- Supporting student loan bailouts for wealthy college graduates financed by the working class
- Doing nothing to stand against her administrations attempt to destroy the digital asset industry
- Supporting the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan as “…the last person in the room when President Biden made the decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan; a fact she boasted shortly after President Biden issued his go-to-zero order…Vice President Harris was entrenched in the president’s Afghanistan policy.” The withdrawal resulted in the loss of $7 billion in U.S. weaponry to the Taliban.
While she is now attempting to brand herself as a “moderate”, her economic policies double down on the failed agenda of the Biden-Harris Administration with calls for more taxes, more spending, more government and lees freedom.
TAX HIKER: Harris “new” plan includes the same calls for job-killing tax hikes that have been included in every Biden-Harris budget. There is little doubt that a Harris administration would be a disaster for American workers and businesses. In her plan, Harris endorses hiking the corporate tax rate to 28%. This is not surprising, given that it has been included in every budget proposal submitted under the Biden/Harris administration. This anti-growth policy would kill 128,000 American jobs by making it more expensive for American businesses to invest in the United States. Her calls to increase taxes on capital gains would compound this drag on investment. Additionally, her call for taxes on unrealized gains would do devastating damage to every Americans retirement account and stunt economic growth by driving capital overseas – while raising little to no revenue. This is an idea so bad that it has been rescinded by 9 of 13 OECD countries that have tried it.
The Biden-Harris budgets, supported by the Vice President, have included additional tax hikes on American workers and businesses. These include raising the top tax rate on small businesses to 39.6%, which would result in 86,000 job losses, and higher taxes on investment income for another 177,000 job losses. Harris will also continue the radical expansion of anti-growth regulations – totaling $1.68 trillion – which would devastate American businesses. This includes the PM2.5 standard which would destroy 1 million jobs while reducing GDP by $200 billion and new energy regulations that will dramatically increase energy costs by making it impossible for coal and new natural gas plants to operate.
GREEN NEW DEAL: As Vice President, Harris was the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provided $1.2 trillion in subsidies to billion-dollar industries to raise American energy costs.
In her “new” plan, the core of her economic agenda remains confiscating the tax dollars of hard working Americans and small businesses to subsidize her friends who specialize in producing inefficient, expensive and unreliable energy that drives up costs for Americans.. It is ironic that Harris highlights the expansion of tax credits to reduce energy costs when it is her policies driving those costs higher in the first place. Nowhere in her plan does she advocate for rolling back the 200 actions her administration has taken to restrict oil production or reducing the regulatory burden on new nuclear technologies. Instead, she intends to force American taxpayers to finance her biggest donors through subsidies and higher energy costs.
STIMULUS BREEDS INFLATION: As noted on her own website, Harris was also the deciding vote in favor of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), which drove inflation to the highest levels in 40 years through $1.9 trillion in reckless spending and giveaways to liberal special interests.
Her “new” plan proposes to resurrect the universal basic income (UBI) designed child tax credit (CTC) included in that legislation, which provided monthly cash payments with no work requirement. This proposal would lead to 1.5 million people leaving the labor force and becoming dependent on the welfare state. Every study on UBI schemes finds the same result: people stop working, become dependent on the government, and miss out on opportunities to climb the economic ladder and earn more income in the future..
PRICE CONTROLS: Harris’ “new” plan doubles down on her calls for broad price controls. This proposal has been justly mocked by those on all sides of the political spectrum. As seen in every country that has attempted them, price controls will create substantial shortages of essential goods. Particularly galling is her attempt to blame high food prices on companies with profit margins of 1.6% and use this as justification to further empower an out-of-control Federal Trade commission (FTC) to harass business owners who have been forced to endure the inflation caused by the Biden-Harris agenda.
GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE: Harris’ “new” plan promises to double down on the failed government takeover of healthcare that began with Obamacare and has continued through the Biden-Harris Administration. She promises to make permanent the ARP and IRA’s expansion of Obamacare, which forces taxpayers to subsidize health insurance for those making as much as $500,000. The CBO confirmed that these subsidies are a significant contributor to inflation and will do little more than put continued upward pressure on the cost of health care. Harris also proposes to expand price controls on Medicare included in the IRA. These price controls are already restricting access to life-saving drugs for seniors and forcing massive increases in premiums. She is pledging to double down on these policies, which will only exacerbate the pain inflicted on seniors.
THREATENING THE AMERICAN DREAM OF HOME OWNERSHIP: Harris “new” housing policies would merely expand the failed big government policies of the last of the last 40 years. Harris’ housing proposals would do nothing to make it easier for working class Americans to buy a home. Instead, her proposed tax credit for first time homebuyers would put continued upward pressure on housing prices through increased demand – sowing the seeds of another housing bubble. Her calls for an expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a $40 billion “innovation fund” and two new tax credits – a “Neighborhood Homes Credit” and a credit to build homes for first time buyers – triples down on the Washington subsidy based approach that has failed for decades while doing nothing to roll back regulations that hold back the supply of housing. Harris’ attempt to blame landlords is laughable and a dodge from the simple fact that the policies she has championed are responsible for the high cost of housing. The end result will be higher costs for homeowners, more debt for taxpayers and no meaningful increase in the housing supply. If Harris were serious about lowering housing costs, she would follow the example of Argentina President Javier Milei and call for the elimination of rent control and other regulations that discourage the expansion of the housing supply.
PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS: Harris “new” plan promises to expand the massive government subsidy schemes of the Biden-Harris administration which have failed to promote American manufacturing. Contrary to her claims, these policies have merely shifted resources to less productive uses and led to a less robust manufacturing sector. The disastrous central planning and industrial policy of her Administration has failed to meaningfully grow manufacturing jobs beyond pre-pandemic levels, failed to increase business investment and led to continued contraction in manufacturing output. Expanding on the IRA’s special interest tax credits with a new “America Forward” tax credit for certain industries will simply reward lobbying rather than innovation and is doomed to miss the mark. This central planning has and will continue to fail American manufacturing. The American people are smart enough to not entrust Vice President Harris to play venture capitalist with their hard-earned dollars.
MORE ATTACKS ON THE AMERICAN WORKER: Harris’ “new” education and workforce proposals are equally disastrous and would continue the anti-worker policies pursued by the Biden-Harris Administration. She highlights and celebrates the Biden-Harris student loan bailouts for the wealthy financed by middle-class taxpayers. Through her support of the PRO Act, long championed by her administration, Harris has committed to supporting the agenda of union bosses at the expense of workers. This radical legislation would end Right-to-Work (RTW) laws that ensure no one is forced to join or finance a union against their will. Ending RTW laws that are supported by 79% of union members would violate the constitutional rights of all workers and significantly dent the faster economic growth seen in RTW states. Repeal of RTW would be especially damaging for manufacturers, with recent research showing that this policy increases a state’s share of manufacturing employment by 28%. The PRO Act would also effectively outlaw independent contracting and put the jobs of millions of gig workers in jeopardy. Finally, the PRO Act would dramatically increase liability risks and regulatory costs for small businesses operating as franchises and result in 376,000 job losses.
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