By Carol Lucas
This past week, both presidential candidates offered their vision of the future for our country, should they be elected. Perhaps I should amend that to say one candidate did this with a degree of success while the other managed to ramble on in his usual fashion.
Last Friday, in Raleigh, N.C., Kamala Harris spoke before an audience to lay out her plan which she contends will elevate the lives of the middle class by focusing on lower food prices, the cost of health care and housing, as well as provisions for child care.
She called this an “opportunity economy,” with basic financial security at its core.
It should be noted here that Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, made child care a focus of his economic agenda as Minnesota governor, including state tax credits, and support for working families and the child-care industry.
Furthermore, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has also voiced support for an expanded child tax credit. To my knowledge, this has never received support from Donald Trump.
An additional note to this part of Harris’ proposal: many business executives see lack of affordable, accessible child care as a labor market constraint, but the U.S. remains an outlier among developed economies in its lack of policy support.
An additional part of the Harris/ Walz plan includes a federal ban on price gouging on groceries. This would include setting “clear rules of the road” so that corporations “can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits” on grocery staples, according to the fact sheet.
One need only research the recent profits declared by some of the larger food corporations to see this must be addressed. I found the following on Food and Water Watch.
“The grocery juggernaut saw a $163 million increase in profits from 2022 to 2023, for a total of over $13.6 billion. Moreover, market power enables corporations to get away with harmful, cost-cutting practices, like the poor manure management on factory farms that pollutes communities with waste. Such practices directly harm our climate, environment, and public health.
“The bigger and more powerful a corporation is, the more it can duck accountability for its actions — and the more it can influence policymakers by spending millions on lobbying to sway policy in their favor.”
If you are asking why the Biden Administration made no attempts to stem this tide, you would be wrong in your assumption. In September of 2022, they convened representatives from all arenas involved with this problem at the White House. Together they formed The National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.
The goal was to improve food access and affordability. Harris wants to improve upon this by increasing access to free and nourishing school meals and expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility to more under-served populations.
Let’s look at the press conference that Trump held at Bedminster, N.J. Surrounded by Cheerios, coffee containers, and a doll house, and waxing eloquent about bird cemeteries, the former President spoke for almost an hour before taking any questions.
Following the conference, ABC News fact-checked a few of Trump’s claims to provide context, and it appeared his remarks contained both falsehoods and exaggerations.
Regarding mortgage rates, Trump claimed that rates are now 10% under Biden’s leadership which is false. Mortgage rates are now the lowest in more than a year at 6.49%, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported.
He spoke of Tim Walz, alleging the Governor approved a bill to put tampons into boys’ bathrooms. This is misleading at best. In 2023, Walz signed a law that required public schools to provide access to menstrual products in bathrooms regularly used by students in Grades 4 to 12. So much for addressing the economy.
And of course, the topic of the border was addressed. On this, it was the same argument, but this time “Harris allowed more than 20 million people into the U.S.” This figure was inflated by almost twice the actual figure. I readily agree the real figure isn’t acceptable, but leave it to Trump to embellish.
What Trump didn’t address, but has stated before, is his further reduction of income tax of the billionaires and corporations. Nor did he talk about sweeping taxes on imports, China specifically. You might say, “Why not tax China?” I would respond, “Who will really end up paying that tax?”
Harris has framed her plan in stark contrast to the proposals put forward by her Republican rival. She and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will “fulfill their commitment to fiscal responsibility, including by “asking the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to pay their fair share,” the campaign said.
The tax cuts for families drew wide support from economists who spoke to ABC News, though some emphasized the importance of accompanying those proposals with revenue-raising measures that will offset the tax reductions.
There are aspects of the Harris/Walz proposal that I find questionable — $25,000 afforded to first time home builders, for instance. However, when we look at other nations that provide so much of what we, the wealthiest nation in the world, fall short on, it’s time to change course; in fact it is overdue.
Harris concluded her speech on the economy with this: “I think that if you want to know who someone cares about, look who they fight for.” You may not like her laugh (or cackle, as those grasping for straws will push), but unless you are a billionaire, you may want to overlook that.
Carol Lucas is a retired high school teacher and a Lady’s Island resident. She is the author of the recently published “A Breath Away: One Woman’s Journey Through Widowhood.”
