Harris unveils economic plan focused on housing and food prices

Vice President Harris is expected to unveil an economic plan on Friday that focuses on the high costs of housing and food – expenses that matter most to voters who have been suffering from years of rising prices.

Harris will deliver the first major political speech of her campaign in Raleigh, North Carolina, a city where her campaign is highlighting innovative affordable housing projects in a state where Democrats are trying to win the presidential election for the first time since 2008.

Polls have shown that Biden gets little credit for his efforts to lower prices and that many voters still trust Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump more on economic issues. However, polls also show that voters are less critical of Harris on economic issues.

“Although our economy is doing well by many measures, prices for everyday items like groceries are still too high. You know it and I know it,” Harris said on August 10 during her campaign trip to Las Vegas.

On Friday, Harris will announce a tax break proposal that her campaign says would lead to the construction of three million new housing units in four years, going beyond Biden's White House proposal to alleviate the housing shortage with two million new and renovated homes.

Harris' plan includes unspecified tax incentives for developers seeking to finance first-time homebuyers and affordable rental housing construction. She proposes a $40 billion fund to help local governments finance construction projects. The Biden White House had already proposed $20 billion. Like all spending, these proposals would depend on Congress' willingness to fund them.

Harris would ask Congress to give first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 for their down payment – a plan her campaign said could help more than 4 million first-time buyers. That's more generous than a plan Biden announced in his State of the Union address this year that would have given first-time buyers a $10,000 tax credit and helped about 400,000 first-time buyers with a down payment.

Harris will take tough action against corporations, her campaign team says

Harris will argue that corporations make too much money off consumers as she lays out her economic priorities, a theme she hinted at during the campaign when she pointed to her work on price-fixing during her tenure as California's attorney general.

“If I am president, my priority from day one will be to fight for low prices, to take on the big corporations that engage in illegal price gouging, to take on big landlords who unfairly raise rents for working families, to take on the drug companies and to cap the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans,” she said in a speech on August 7 in Detroit.

Harris and Biden made campaign-style remarks Thursday about their efforts to lower prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries – a moment in which Harris sought to show she was on board with a policy that polls show is popular but for which Biden received little credit.

Her campaign said Harris would support a bill by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio that would limit tax breaks for corporate investors who buy up homes. She would also support a bill by Democratic Senator Peter Welch of Vermont and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon that would prohibit landlords from buying algorithmic data that helps them raise rents.

On food prices, Harris will call for a federal ban on price fixing in the food sector. She will focus on meat prices in particular, blaming the concentrated meat processing sector for the price increases. She will also promise that her administration will more aggressively investigate and prosecute price fixing in the meat supply chain.

This proposal is similar to an approach taken by the Biden administration, which said in September 2021 that it would crack down on price fixing, enforce antitrust laws in the meat sector and also provide financial support to smaller players to stimulate competition.

Harris' plan would give the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general the power to investigate and fine companies, her campaign said. Many large retailers have kept food prices high instead of passing on the savings to consumers, Harris is likely to say.

In her speech, she will say that her government will closely examine proposed mergers in the food sector to assess the risk that a merger could lead to higher food prices.

Copyright: NPR