Kamala Harris faced one of her most serious tests as a Democratic candidate in this short, intense and anything but conventional US election campaign on Friday: her first speech on government proposals. At an event in Raleigh (North Carolina), the vice president presented her economic program, a platform with which she wants to appeal to the middle class, establish her own stamp without apostatizing from the Biden Administration and demonstrate credibility and competence in one of the key electoral issues in which the Democrats are perceived as weakest. “I am going to focus absolutely on creating opportunities for the middle class,” she said at the rally, to applause from the audience. “Together we will build what I call an economy of opportunities.”
In her proposals for her first 100 days in the Oval Office, Harris proposes a federal ban on food price speculation, measures to help first-time home buyers and make real estate prices more affordable — which were the main driver of inflation in July — and taking steps to cut medical costs, another of the largest outlays for average American families.
A statement from her campaign details that the Democratic presidential candidate will propose, among other measures, the construction of three million homes in four years to deal with skyrocketing prices in the sector due to a shortage of supply and mortgage interest rates at their highest levels for more than 20 years. She also plans a contribution of 25,000 dollars (about 24,000 euros) to first-time home buyers and a tax subsidy of 6,000 dollars per newborn child for low-income families. In addition, in a country where there is no universal health coverage, she plans to reduce the cost of health insurance and extend the limit of 35 dollars per month in co-payments for insulin throughout the country.
For the most part, Harris’ proposals, which add to her call over the weekend to make tips tax-free, are not original. They expand on popular measures already in place or presented by President Joe Biden’s administration, and put less emphasis on the large infrastructure projects her predecessor boasted about, in order to emphasize other measures that could directly affect the pocketbooks of the average American. “Buying a home is more than an investment,” said the candidate, who tries to make the hallmark of her campaign identification with ordinary families.
“If you want to know what a candidate stands for, look at who he stands for. Donald Trump stands for millionaires,” argued the vice president, who will formally accept the Democratic nomination at the party convention in Chicago next week. “Now is the time to set a new path forward. An America in which everyone has the opportunity not only to survive, but to improve.”
The program does not go into great detail. It does not explain exactly how it would prevent food price speculation, or what income levels would qualify a family to receive the child tax subsidy, a measure that Biden’s version approved in the House of Representatives but is blocked in the Senate.
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Nor does it detail how it plans to pay for these new programs. The campaign only suggests that the budget gaps will be filled by “asking the wealthiest Americans and corporate giants to pay their fair share.” In any case, if Harris wins the White House, their implementation will depend on the approval of Congress following the November elections. Republicans now have a majority in the House of Representatives, and Democrats face a difficult path to maintain their slim lead—51 seats out of a total of 100—in the Senate.
Some experts point out that Harris’s plans could have unintended effects. For example, they believe that the proposed $25,000 housing voucher could boost demand in the real estate sector and, in doing so, fuel the high prices she is trying to combat.
Strategic ambiguity
The launch of the program in North Carolina, one of the key swing states, seeks to neutralize voices that point out that, three weeks after having entered the arena, Harris’s campaign lacks defined political positions and is merely taking advantage of the enthusiasm generated among voters by the entry of a new face into the electoral race. But the lack of details is voluntary: with its “strategic ambiguity” in areas such as energy, the campaign seeks to avoid possible damaging attacks from big business or lobby groups.
With her proposals, Harris hopes to mark a difference with her rival Donald Trump, who Americans consider, according to most polls, better qualified to straighten out an economy that they perceive to be burdened by inflation and uncertainty about the future.
Annual inflation is at its lowest level in three years, at 2.9%, according to official data released this week. But food prices are still 21% higher than three years ago.
The Republicans want to play this card to the fullest. Their strategy is to launch a full-throated criticism of the Biden administration’s economic policy and link Harris to the measures taken in the last three and a half years, while the government tried to fight against rampant inflation that has driven up the cost of living.

On Thursday, billionaire Trump held a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he stood next to a table full of basic food products, to emphasize the message of unaffordable prices. Harris, the Republican candidate maintained, “is a radical Californian liberal who has destroyed the economy.” Her proposals for controlling food prices, according to him, are “communist-inspired.” “We call it the Maduro plan,” he joked, referring to the Venezuelan populist leader.
The Republican economic proposal has tax cuts as one of its main pillars, a formula that Trump already resorted to during his term in office. The real estate magnate then reduced the corporate rate from 35% to 21% and implemented other cuts that will expire next year. The former president, who has promised to make those cuts permanent, has also proposed, before Harris, that tips should not be taxed.
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