VP Harris’ Economic Agenda Will Continue to Dismantle Forty Years of Neo-Liberal “Trickle-Down” Economics
Did you travel anywhere over the summer?
Whether you flew, drove, or rode mass transit, you have likely noticed an increase in construction along America’s highways and bridges. While that may be a headache to contend with when we’ve got places to go, think about what it means for our national infrastructure. Think about how much work was sorely needed to improve our crumbling roads, bridges, water delivery and waste systems, electrical grids, and emission standards.
Have you gassed up your vehicle or gone shopping?
You may have noticed that gas prices are falling, as are grocery prices.
Prescription drug costs, healthcare costs, airline ticket prices are all coming down as well.
Most of the improvements we’re seeing are a direct result of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) President Biden signed two years ago and the American Rescue Plan Biden signed upon taking office in 2021.
This week, Vice President Kamala Harris, the soon-to-be Democratic nominee, released her progressive economic policy that promises to continue to build and expand on the IRA and other Biden administration progress.
She explained:
For too many people, no matter how much they work, it feels so hard to just be able to get ahead. As president, I will be laser-focused on creating opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.
According to Investopedia:
Where Biden had pushed for $25,000 in downpayment assistance for first-generation first-time homebuyers, Harris called for that same amount for first-time buyers regardless of whether their parents owned homes. Where Biden had proposed expanding the child tax credit to a maximum of $3,600 per year per child from $2,000, Harris called for the same, but boosting the amount to $6,000 for newborns. Biden sought to promote affordable housing with a $20 billion fund for local construction, and Harris called for $40 billion.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Where the Biden administration called for constructing two million new homes, Harris’ plan increases it to three million for which she intends to incentivize builders with a tax break for making homes for first-time buyers. Local governments would receive a $40 billion fund to finance their housing crisis solutions.
Harris will also lean on Congress to pass the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, which seeks to prevent landlords from using price-fixing algorithms to increase rents; and the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which would limit tax breaks for large investors and private equity firms bulk buying single-family rental homes.
Harris stated:
Some corporate landlords, some of them, buy dozens if not hundreds of houses and apartments. Then they turn them around and rent them out at extremely high prices. And it can make it impossible then for regular people to buy or even rent a home.
For those renters who have consistently paid their rent on time for at least two years, Harris wants to provide up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance. First-generation homeowners can expect more support.
CHILD TAX CREDIT
Three years ago, millions of Americans received $3,600 for children under age six and $3,000 per child for children between six and 17. This slashed monthly child poverty by 30%, the most effective reduction since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs fifty years ago.
Harris wants to improve on this by restoring the Child Tax Credit to American Rescue Plan levels, giving working- and middle-class families with children up to $3,600 per child. She also wants to extend a $6,000 tax cut to families with newborns.
For those without children in lower-income jobs, Harris’ plan calls for an Earned Income Tax Credit of $1,500.
President Biden is the first president to take on the neo-liberal “trickle-down” economic policies started during the Reagan administration. The Inflation Reduction Act requires companies reporting more than $1 billion in profits to pay a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, and wealthy shareholders to pay a 1% tax on stock buybacks. It also requires Americans making over $400,000 to pay a little more in taxes. VP Harris is committed to perpetuating the Biden tax plan keeping those making under $400,000 a year from not seeing a penny in tax increases.
INFLATION (AKA CORPORATE GREED, AKA PRICE GOUGING)
Ah, inflation.
We hear that word every day on our news channels of choice, podcasts, and even commercials. But how many news sources actually break down what it is? How many have explained the price increases we are shouldering are left over from the supply chain issues corporations experienced during the pandemic? Corporate profits soared during those delightful couple of years, so what incentive do corporations raking in more than ever — and enjoying the $1.5 trillion dollar tax break guaranteed when the convicted felon Donald Trump signed the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” at the end of his first year in office--have in returning costs to pre-pandemic levels?
Zero.
Since the media doesn’t explain it, people are left to do what they normally do when they complain about prices--blame the government.
Kamala Harris proposes working with Congress within her first 100 days in office to enact a federal ban on price gouging on groceries and other goods. This would require new enforcement authority for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general to include pursuing anti-monopoly standards to prevent food companies from merging, a major cause of skyrocketing prices.
13 million families covered under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) are seeing health insurance costs decrease by an average of $800 a year, and three million more Americans are now insured. This is a step closer to the Medicare-for-All single-payer universal healthcare we need and will eventually have.
Most “surprise billing” medical charges from out-of-network insurance providers are now banned under the “No Surprises Act”.
Medicare is negotiating for more affordable pharmaceutical drugs.
Insulin costs are capped at $35 per month for almost four million diabetic seniors on Medicare, and lower out-of-pocket cost of inhalers for tens of millions is in the works.
Harris also wants to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips.
No surprise, the right wing is calling VP Harris “Communist!” “Marxist!” “Comrade Kamala!”
Why wouldn’t it? It has no polices to benefit non-millionaires. It has nothing for the middle class, nothing for lower income Americans but sound bites, insults, and conspiracy theories.
Vice President Harris’ economic plan is progressive, realistic, and necessary. And that’s why the right is attacking it.
Is there more it could contain? Of course. No policy proposal includes everything. Nothing is perfect.
But do we really want the alternative, blatantly and insultingly delineated in the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for autocracy, “Project 2025” — the autocrat’s agenda for a total corporate takeover of our democratically limited constitutional democracy?
Joe Biden is the first president to repudiate decades of Keynesian Reaganomics, aka “trickle-down economics”, aka “neoliberalism”. As president, Kamala Harris promises to take that repudiation ever further.
That’s historic.
