Tax cuts, housing subsidies, more price caps

Vice President Kamala Harris will unveil a series of latest economic proposals on Friday that she’s going to prioritize in her first 100 days in office. The measures aim to lower the associated fee of food and prescribed drugs, create reasonably priced housing and cut taxes for the center class.

The Democratic presidential candidate will visit the swing state of North Carolina to deliver her first political speech since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race in late July, catapulting himself to the highest of the ballot box.

“These bold actions will address some of the biggest problems facing American families and strengthen their financial security,” the Harris campaign said in a fact sheet on the plans on Friday.

To address stubbornly high food prices, Harris will work with Congress to pass the primary federal ban on “corporate price gouging” on food and grocery products.

This would come with establishing clear “rules of the road” to be certain that food retailers “cannot unfairly exploit consumers in order to generate excessive corporate profits,” the factsheet says.

Harris would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general the authority to analyze and prosecute alleged violations.

A Harris administration would also take an aggressive regulatory approach to planned mergers and consolidations amongst the biggest food producers.

Harris' plan would help Tenants in financial distress By stopping data firms from raising rents and by stopping Wall Street investors from buying up large amounts of homes to resell at a premium.

Harris may also call on the US to release 3 million recent residential units over the following 4 years. To make this possible, it is going to call for brand new tax incentives for developers who construct “starter homes.”

Any change to tax law requires approval from Congress and depends heavily on which party controls the House of Representatives and the Senate.

As the availability of entry-level homes has grown, the Harris plan would supply “up to $25,000 in down payment assistance to working families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are purchasing their first home, with even more generous assistance for first-generation homeowners,” the actual fact sheet says.

Harris would seek to expand the Biden administration's $35 price cap on insulin for Medicare beneficiaries to cover insulin costs for all Americans, not only the elderly.

Similar to her cost-cutting plans for the food industry, Harris' health care policy relies partially on stricter regulations and strict antitrust enforcement.

According to the Harris campaign, the plan calls for a “tough crackdown on pharmaceutical companies that hinder competition and engage in abusive practices by pharmaceutical middlemen.”

Restoring the expanded child tax credit, first introduced in the course of the Covid pandemic, is a long-standing goal of the Biden administration and one which Harris will take up if she is elected president.

She even desires to go a step further and propose an expanded tax credit of as much as $6,000 for families with newborns.

The Harris campaign calls this a “year when many families' expenses are at their highest – for cribs, diapers, car seats and more.” It also points out that many parents who should not eligible for paid leave must choose from spending time with their baby or working enough hours to make ends meet.

After just three weeks of campaigning, Harris has worn out former President Donald Trump's poll lead over Biden.

But the vp has largely steered clear of creating concrete political statements, preferring as a substitute to attract distinctions from Trump.

Her speech within the Tar Heel State will give her the chance to articulate a vision for the economy that builds on – and possibly moves away from – parts of the Biden administration's economic record.

On Thursday, Harris and Biden appeared together in Maryland to advertise an agreement with pharmaceutical firms to scale back the associated fee of the ten costliest prescribed drugs under Medicare.

The landmark negotiations – made possible by Biden’s key spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act – will end in net savings of about $6 billion for Medicare in the event that they officially come into force in 2026, based on the federal government.

The vp's speech comes just two days after Trump delivered his own economic speech in North Carolina.

In his speech in Asheville, Trump attacked Harris personally while blaming her for the high consumer prices that Biden has worked to scale back during much of his presidency.

Recent polls suggest the state, which Trump won within the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, is now close by for Harris in 2024.

A brand new round of swing states Survey results A poll released Wednesday by the Cook Political Report found Harris leading Trump by one percentage point in North Carolina, 48 to 47, well inside the poll's margin of error.