OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who has yet to do a solo interview since President Joe Biden decided to end his reelection campaign in early July, has finally added her policy priorities to her campaign website just ahead of her Tuesday debate with GOP nominee Donald Trump.
As reported by Fox News, the website breaks Harris and her vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’ policy proposals into four sections: “Build an Opportunity Economy and Lower Costs for Families,” “Safeguard Our Fundamental Freedoms,” “Ensure Safety and Justice For All,” and “Keep America Safe, Secure, and Prosperous.”
Before the recent update, Harris’ campaign website featured pages for merchandise purchases, donations, and information about the candidate’s background but lacked any policy plans for weeks, even after she formally accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago 17 days ago, Fox noted.
Harris’s website now includes a pledge to trim taxes for middle-class families by “ensuring no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes.”
The website promises that Harris and Walz “will ensure the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations pay their fair share, so we can take action to build up the middle class while reducing the deficit,” including by “rolling back Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, enacting a billionaire minimum tax, quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, and other reforms to ensure the very wealthy are playing by the same rules as the middle class.”
It should be noted that even after the Trump-era reform, which cut taxes for more than 85 percent of earners, nearly all income taxes are currently paid by the wealthiest 10 percent of earners.
“Under her plan, the tax rate on long-term capital gains for those earning a million dollars a year or more will be 28 percent, because when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth and creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger,” the website says.
The site also claims that Harris’ “lowering costs agenda is a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to jack up prices, weaken the middle class, cut Social Security and Medicare, eliminate the Department of Education and preschool programs like Head Start, and end the Affordable Care Act.”
Much of the Harris website’s policy section focuses on attacking her opponent. Under each policy section, Harris includes a subsection on what she calls “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda,” which the former president has repeatedly said he was never involved with and has criticized much of it. The plan was created by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Harris’ website also asserts that Trump would ban abortion and restrict in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, despite Trump saying exactly the opposite.
Trump has stated that he would not implement a federal abortion ban and recently suggested that he would consider ensuring that the government or insurance companies cover fertility treatments.
Regarding the economy, Harris claims that Trump’s “plans would increase costs for families by at least $3,900 a year by slapping a Trump sales tax on imported everyday goods that American families rely on, like gas, food, clothing, and medicine,” and would raise rents and add $1,200 a year to the typical American mortgage. But inflation has set records under the Biden-Harris administration, while it was extremely low during Trump’s term.
The site also says Trump will implement the Project 2025 agenda if elected “to consolidate power, bring the Department of Justice and the FBI under his direct control so he can give himself unchecked legal power and go after his opponents, and rule as a dictator on ‘day one.’”
But again, it’s been the Biden-Harris administration that has utilized the Justice Department to go after its primary political opponent — Trump — while the former president never oversaw any prosecutions against Hillary Clinton despite alleging multiple violations of the law during his campaign against her.
