Early Education: Ensuring access to affordable, high-quality child care and preschool.
Higher Ed & Debt: Continuing efforts to tackle student loan debt (citing $170 billion in relief provided so far) and increasing Pell Grants.
Career Training: Investing in apprenticeships and scaling up programs that create career pathways for non-college graduates.
Policy
Lowering Costs: Reducing expenses for families needing child care and high-quality home care for seniors and people with disabilities.
Supporting Workers: Ensuring that care workers receive a living wage and are treated with dignity.
Policy
Harris cites the creation of over 1.6 million manufacturing and construction jobs and a surge in private sector investment.
Future Industries: continued support for leadership in semiconductors, clean energy, and AI.
Pro-Union Agenda: Pledges to sign the PRO Act and protect the right to organize.
Worker Wages: Supports raising the minimum wage to 15$, ending sub-minimum wages, establishing paid leave, and eliminating taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.
Economics
Vice President Harris views affordable health care as a right, not a privilege. Building on her record of taking on insurance companies and Big Pharma, her plan includes:
expanding the ACA: Making the tax credit enhancements that lower premiums permanent.
Capping Costs: Extending the $35 insulin cap and the $2,000 annual out-of-pocket cap (currently for seniors) to all Americans.
Debt Relief: working with states to cancel medical debt, building on the administration's removal of medical debt from credit reports.
Maternal Health: Combating maternal mortality by encouraging states to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months.
Policy
Vice President Harris and Governor Walz identify small businesses—from local shops to high-tech startups—as the primary engines of the American economy. Building on her record as Vice President and Senator, Harris pledges to continue investing in entrepreneurs through her "Opportunity Economy" agenda
1. Record of Growth and Investment
The campaign highlights the Biden-Harris Administration’s previous efforts to democratize access to capital, particularly in overlooked regions of middle America. Cited achievements include:
Historic Growth: Driving a record 19 million new business applications.
Inclusive Lending: Tripling Small Business Administration (SBA) lending to Black-owned businesses and more than doubling small-dollar loans to Latino and women-owned businesses.
Federal Contracts: Championing the expansion of federal contracts awarded to minority-owned small businesses.
2. Future Goals and Proposals
Harris has set a target of achieving 25 million new business applications by the end of her first term, noting this is 10 million more than were recorded during Donald Trump's term. To facilitate this growth, the plan includes:
Tax Relief: Increasing the startup expense tax deduction tenfold, raising it from $5,000 to $50,000 to lower the barrier to entry for new owners.
Cutting Red Tape: Removing bureaucratic obstacles that hinder business growth.
Expanding Capital: Directing venture capital to talent across the country, including rural areas, and further increasing the share of federal contract dollars designated for small businesses.
Economics
Vice President Harris views homeownership as a vital component of financial security and a primary vehicle for building intergenerational wealth. Drawing on her experience as California Attorney General—where she secured $20 billion for families facing foreclosure and championed a "Homeowner Bill of Rights"—her platform outlines a comprehensive strategy to address the current housing crisis.
1. Increasing Supply and Lowering Costs
To tackle the shortage of available housing, the plan sets a goal of building 3 million new rental units and affordable homes during Harris's first term. The strategy includes:
Cutting Red Tape: Streamlining regulations to accelerate construction.
Combating Corporate Abuses: Signing legislation to outlaw price-fixing by corporate landlords and penalizing firms that hoard housing stock to artificially inflate prices.
2. Support for Homebuyers
Recognizing that homeownership is currently out of reach for many, the plan proposes direct financial assistance to help Americans enter the middle class:
Down Payment Assistance: Providing up to $25,000 to help first-time homebuyers with their down payments.
First-Generation Support: Offering even more generous support specifically for first-generation homeowners.
Policy
Clean Energy Economy: Creating jobs and lowering household energy costs through clean energy investments.
Accountability: rigorous enforcement against polluters to secure clean air and water, with a focus on environmental justice.
Global Leadership: committed to international cooperation to meet global climate challenges.
Trump: Pledges to "cancel the electric vehicle mandate" and cut costly regulations. His goal is to make the U.S. the dominant energy producer "by far" (typically implying fossil fuels).
Harris: Views climate change as a crisis and highlights the "Inflation Reduction Act" as the largest climate investment in history. She supports electric vehicle supply chains and creating clean energy jobs.
Policy