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Vice President Kamala Harris will roll out an economic agenda on Friday that includes price controls on food and groceries and increased government spending to make homeownership more affordable.
Ms. Harris will double down on these Biden administration staples in Raleigh, North Carolina, in her first major policy speech since suddenly becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.
Among the policies are unprecedented price controls on food and groceries, which her campaign says is necessary because corporations are “price gouging” Americans at the stores. Under her plan, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would have the authority to impose harsh penalties on companies they claim are setting prices too high.
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement announcing the plan.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign slammed the idea as “socialist policies.”
“Kamala Harris has had three-and-a-half years in office and all she’s done is break the economy. Kamala can’t shake the stench of Bidenomics, which she repeatedly praised,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Economists said the Harris plan would destroy the economy by reducing incentives to create food when profits are tightly controlled.
“Can someone give us a lesson on what happens to an economy/county when the incentives to create and produce are destroyed,” Ryan Walker, an economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said on X. “The catch for the left is that will still expect food to be produced and shelves to be fully stocked after they destroy the industry.”
Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, noted that grocery stores have a 1.2% profit margin, while other industries have an average of a 7.6% profit margin.
Ms. Harris is adopting and expanding President Biden’s explanation that corporation greed is responsible for soaring inflation, but some economists have pointed the finger at massive government spending by the administration.
Inflation has eased somewhat since hitting a peak of 9% in 2022 but remains elevated. The Labor Department on Wednesday said the consumer price index, a measure of how much everyday goods like gasoline, groceries and rent cost, rose 0.2% in July from the previous month. Prices were also up 2.9% from July 2023, the lowest level of inflation since March 2021.
Mr. Biden has approved several massive spending bills, causing the national debt to jump by $6.25 trillion during his first three years in office. His fiscal year 2025 budget proposes $3 trillion more in expenditures and tax cuts as part of an overall $7.3 trillion spending spree.
Ms. Harris will also propose offering $25,000 of taxpayer money as down payment support for first-time home buyers. The funds will be available to working families that have paid their rent on time for two years. More generous support will be available for first-generation homeowners.
She will also call for the construction of 3 million new housing units to end the housing supply shortage.
Housing costs were once again the main driver of inflation last month, according to the Labor Department. Rental costs rose 0.3% and up 5.1% from the same time last year.
The economic plan will also call for raising the minimum wage and ending taxes on tips. Her opponent, former President Donald Trump first proposed ending taxes on tips earlier this month.
Ms. Harris’ proposals also include protecting Social Security and Medicare by expanding on Biden-era proposals such as lowering the cost of prescription drugs by capping the cost of insulin at $35 and out-of-pocket expenses for drugs at $2,000 for everyone, not just seniors.
Ms. Harris will also call for restoring the American Rescue Plan’s expanding Child Tax Credit and she will propose a new $6,000 Child Tax Credit for “families with children in the first year of life.”
Efforts to expand the child tax credit went nowhere under Mr. Biden, who pushed multiple times to get it through Congress without any success.
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