What will Kamala Harris do if she wins the US election? The Democrat hasn’t made it clear
Harris seized upon abortion rights as her core campaigning weapon, however questions remain over some of her policies.
Kamala Harris seized upon the issue of restoring abortion rights as her core campaigning weapon against Donald Trump, however questions remain over some of her potential policies ahead of yesterday’s (Tuesday’s) presidential election.
Her inability to stake out consistent positions on healthcare, the environment and the economy led to the collapse of her primary campaign in 2019 as she sought to modify left-wing stances.
Foreign policy experience was a clear gap in her CV when she became vice-president. She has since stood firmly with President Biden in defending Ukraine, while her support for Israel is more nuanced.
WHAT WILL KAMALA HARRIS DO IF SHE WINS?
Below we examine each of her potential policy areas in more detail - and compare her stance with Trump’s.
IMMIGRATION
Harris described Trump’s Mexico border wall as a “medieval vanity project”, but toughened her liberal immigration policies after becoming vice-president. Tasked by Biden with tackling the root causes of migration, she visited some central American countries, and on a trip to Guatemala in 2021 she told prospective migrants: “Do not come.”
The failure of the Biden administration to stem record border arrivals has become a main Republican attack line on Harris.
Before entering office she set out a plan for immigration reform that included extending the path to citizenship for about two million irregular migrants who came as children or who had relatives in America, in stark contrast with Trump’s plans for a mass deportation of all those in the US illegally.
As California’s attorney-general, she told a 2015 interviewer: “Unfortunately, I know what crime looks like ... An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.”
On a visit to the Mexico border in the swing state of Arizona in September, Harris laid out some measures to tighten asylum controls. “I will take further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry. Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years,” she said. “We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators and if someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum.”
Pledging pathways to citizenship for many irregular migrants who are established in the US, she added: “I reject the false choice that suggests we must either choose between securing our border or creating a system of immigration that is safe, orderly and humane. We can and we must do both.”
THE ECONOMY
When she had the chance to stake out her own positions in the Democratic Party contest for the 2020 nomination, Harris was further to the left than Biden on tax reform, saying she wanted to close the wealth gap. She called for more generous tax benefits for lower-income Americans, funded by higher taxes on companies.
She opposed the renewal of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and proposed replacing them with a monthly tax credit worth up to dollars 500 for those earning under dollars 80,000, known as the Lift the Middle Class Act.
In 2019 she proposed a rise in estate taxes on the wealthy to pay for a dollars 300 billion plan to increase teacher salaries. It would have given teachers an average annual pay rise of dollars 13,500.
She has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 per cent to fund handouts and tax cuts for parents and home buyers. She pledged to raise the child tax credit to 6,000 dollars in a child’s first year and to provide 25,000 dollars to first-time home buyers.
HEALTHCARE
The issue that really sank Harris in 2019 was healthcare because of her muddled attempts to find a middle way between the full taxpayer-funded system proposed by Bernie Sanders, known as Medicare for All, and a reformed insurance system to build on Obamacare, as proposed by Biden.
Harris originally seemed to be making a play for the left by backing Medicare for All but then released her own version that carved out a continued role for private insurers. Almost no Democrats supported it, with Biden warning it would undercut Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.
As vice-president, Harris was quiet on healthcare until the Supreme Court overthrew Roe v Wade and she became the leader of the Democratic Party push to restore universal access to abortion.
At her first campaign speech as the likely nominee, she emphasised her mission to “stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion position”. That same day her husband, Doug Emhoff, was dispatched on a campaign visit to an abortion clinic in Virginia, underlining it as a core election issue that is a proven voter motivator.
JUSTICE
Harris made plain her support for racial justice by attacking Biden in a 2019 debate for allying with segregationist senators and opposing the policy of busing black children from poor areas to white middle-class schools, which she said had helped her education.
She has called for an end to mandatory minimum sentences, cash bail and the death penalty, saying they all disproportionately impact non-white defendants. After the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 she backed a bill that would have made it easier to prosecute police officers, creating a national registry of police misconduct and requiring police training on racial profiling. The bill did not pass.
She had been criticised on the left for her record as attorney-general of California, accused of the over-zealous prosecution of black defendants for drug offences. Harris has been explicitly courting black voters, particularly men, long loyal Democrat voters who may be breaking towards Trump according to some polls. Her ‘opportunity agenda for Black men’ includes policies like loans for entrepreneurs, supporting education trading, and legalising recreational marijuana use. She has also called for non-violent marijuana convictions to be expunged. In March, during a discussion with the rapper Fat Joe, she said that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed”.
THE ENVIRONMENT
In 2019 Harris had her own plan to spend dollars 10 trillion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reach a zero-emissions economy by 2045. She also called for a “climate pollution fee” to “make polluters pay for emitting greenhouse gases into our atmosphere” and said she would establish an independent Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability.
Harris said she opposed fracking and offshore drilling during a CNN forum on climate change in 2020 and would also ban fossil fuel leases on public lands.
Since becoming the Democratic candidate, Harris has been at pains to stress that she no longer opposes fracking, which is a major industry in the swing state of Pennsylvania. “What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking,” she told an interview with CNN.
FOREIGN POLICY
Harris said in December 2023 that “Israel has a right to defend itself and we will remain steadfast in that conviction”, adding: “We support Israel’s legitimate military objectives to eliminate the threat of Hamas.” At the same time she advocated better protection of civilians by Israel and in March called for an immediate truce, urging Israel to improve the supply of humanitarian aid.
Harris strongly backs Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia, saying at a Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland that “Russia’s aggression is not only an attack on the lives and the freedom of the people of Ukraine, it is not only an attack on global food security and energy supplies ... [it] is also an attack on international rules and norms.”
At the Munich Security Conference in February she pledged “ironclad” respect for Nato’s Article 5, under which an attack on one member of the alliance requires all other members to come to its defence.
During the vice-presidential debate in 2020, she criticised Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, saying Republicans were losing a trade war with China costing hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
She has also backed Taiwan, saying in September 2022: “We will continue to support Taiwan’s self-defence, consistent with our long-standing policy.”
The Times
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