Kamala Harris unveils economic plan — including a whopping $1.7T in handouts, fed ban on grocery store ‘price gouging’
RALEIGH, North Carolina — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday unveiled the economic policies she would enact in her first 100 days in office — and it comes with a whopping estimated $1.7 trillion in handouts, as well as government price controls on groceries amid ravaging Biden-Harris administration inflation.
Her economic plan includes measures to dole out $25,000 to help first-time homeowners with their down payments and give up to a $6,000 tax breaks for lower and middle-income families who have a child in their first year of life. Harris did not say what incomes qualify as “lower” and “middle.”
The housing subsidies alone are “absolutely inflationary” and would “push a $2 trillion dollar deficit even higher,” Brian Riedl, a senior economic fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Post, referrring to the already projected budget shortfall for 2024. Those subsidies make up just $200 billion of the total $1.7 trillion handouts pledged to voters.
‘Reckless’ handouts
A slew of economists The Post spoke to have already slammed the plan’s hefty price tag amid an already-struggling economy.
“The CRFB estimates make it clear that the Harris agenda—like Biden’s before it—will be fiscally reckless and economically damaging,” Adam Michel, the director of Tax Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Post.
“Writing people large checks and enforcing price controls is a recipe for expanding demand and shrinking supply, creating shortages and necessitating rationing,” Michel said. “The $6,000 child tax credit is the next entry in the child tax credit arms race, in which Republicans and Democrats are trying to outdo each other in writing Americans ever bigger checks. It will only get more expensive from here.”
“This is very reckless to be adding this type of debt to our already existing mountain of debt,” said Joel Griffith, an economic research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told The Post in reference to the rising national deficit that currently sits at $34 trillion and is expected to reach $50 trillion by 2034.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation in an analysis was particularly troubled by the lack of detail she provided over where the funding for the handouts would come.
“Harris’s agenda is missing details on how her proposed tax subsidies and expansions in federal programs would be paid for, risking a worsening debt trajectory,” the foundation said in an analysis. The combined cost of the proposals would likely exceed $2 trillion over 10 years, putting upward pressure on inflation to the extent they are deficit-financed and leading to a further prolonging of the Federal Reserve’s high-interest-rate stance.”
Harris is also proposing giving tax incentives to businesses who build affordable housing and to those Americans building houses themselves and is planning to build $3 million more homes in the next four years.
“Harris’s tax agenda is problematic for three major reasons: it would further entrench social policy and spending into the tax code, it would subsidize home buyers rather than address supply constraints, and it does not specify sufficient offsets to pay for the subsidies, worsening an unsustainable debt trajectory,” the Tax Foundation said.
EJ Antoni, a public-finance economist at The Heritage Foundation, told The Post that “the Harris agenda is even worse than the Biden agenda: it means more spending, more borrowing, and more money printing to pay for it all.”
“The economy is already suffering under an increased regulatory burden from the last 3 1/2 years of overregulation and this agenda would send those cost increases into overdrive.””Harris’ economic proposals are a recipe for higher inflation and widespread shortages of basic items necessary for living like food and housing,” added Cato budget and entitlement policy director Romina Boccia.
Price controls
The Trump campaign has especially taken issue with her price control policies, calling them “communist” and comparing her proposals to those of authoritarian leaders in Venezuela and Cuba.
“When the government comes in and takes over food production and sets prices, that inevitably leads to food shortages and even famines,” economist Kevin Hassett said in a Trump campaign press call.
Harris blamed the high grocery prices on the supply chain disruption during the pandemic, but admitted that costs have remained high even after the logistical issues got better in the years since the height of COVID.
“A loaf of bread costs 50% more today that it did before the pandemic. Ground beef is up almost 50%” she said, oddly referring to the lower costs under the Trump administration.
That’s why she thinks federal price limits are needed for the first time in US history.
“We know that many Americans don’t yet feel that progress in their daily lives, costs are still too high, and on a deeper level, for too many people, no matter how much they work, it feels so hard to just be able to get ahead,” Harris said in Raleigh at her campaign stop.
“As President, I will be laser focused on creating opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity. Together, we will build what I call an opportunity economy.”
But economist Stephen Moore in the Trump campaign call said “the average margin for a grocery store or 7 Eleven sell food is between two and three percentage points,” predicting that “many of them will go out of business” with price controls.
Riedl agreed, telling The Post that “price controls do not eliminate inflation — they only delay it, with huge shortages in the meantime.”
The Trump campaign has stressed that Harris is currently in office as vice president and has presided over the economy for the last three and a half years.
Harris argued that Trump did not offer concrete policy proposals in his speech on the economy that he did on Thursday.
In his speech standing in front of groceries, Trump blamed Harris for the current economy and said he would “drill baby drill” when he got back into office, lowering the price of energy.
He also said he would free up federal land to build more houses on and work to reduce the price of energy by 50%.
Harris has not yet revealed her energy policies, other than her campaign telling reporters that she has reversed her 2020 presidential campaign position that would have banned fracking.
Capping drug costs
Harris also 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.”
Specifically, Harris wants to cap insulin costs at $35 and out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 for everyone, not just seniors.
She also wants to “accelerate the speed of Medicare negotiations over prescription drugs,” something that has been a priority for President Biden.
Harris joined Biden for an event in Maryland on Thursday where she sought to tie herself to Biden’s relatively popular prescription drug policy despite her campaign attempting to distance her from the current president on other topics.
That event ostensibly was to celebrate the announcement of 10 prescription drug prices that will be lowered for senior citizens enrolled in Medicare Part D — with those savings taking effect in 2026, reducing both consumer and government costs.
Reception
Despite economists’ concerns of their consequences, the plan played well to her audience of supporters at the North Carolina event.
Attendee Dylan Neil noted that Harris’ ideas on curbing price gouging are “definitely a good policy, a lot of larger organizations can weasel their way in to manipulate certain systems, and I think that’s definitely an issue, and I think that it’s a really good proposal on her end.”
Asked about Trump calling Harris’ plan to end price-gouging “communist”, Sangimino said that’s “insane, just like Donald Trump.” Neil added “I don’t think it’s communist at all.”
Jessica McKoy, a 30-year-old pharmacist from Raleigh, told the Post that she was keen on Harris’ plan to put “the stop on inflation,” adding that she was excited to hear more about the “plan to cut living expenses, groceries, gas taxes, and just represent the middle class.”
For Meg Sangimino, a content marketer in her late 20’s, the Child Tax Credit “sounded very promising,” adding that it was the first time she’d heard of the idea.”It seems like she is really focusing on families, especially in the middle class. That’s very appealing to me,” she said.
Playing to the middle class has been a key aspect for both the Trump and Harris campaigns.
Asked if she thought it was fair for people with kids to pay less in taxes, Sangimino said, “I do, yeah, people with kids have a lot of costs that people without kids don’t have.”
“We’re childless and I think we see the benefits financially of not having a child,” she said. “And so, the people who do have kids, I think they deserve a little bit of an easy break.”
