Kamala Harris’s new economic plan draws Democrats’ praise, GOP’s scorn

As Vice President Kamala Harris’s new economic proposals dominated Sunday morning’s political shows, allies touted her ideas to address food and housing costs as beneficial to middle-class Americans, while critics — including Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the GOP vice-presidential nominee — slammed her plan as unworkable and unrealistic.

Harris’s economic plan, which she laid out in a speech Friday, includes a ban on price gouging for groceries and food, the cancellation of medical debt, a cap on prescription drug costs, a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers and a child tax credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life. The proposals have been cheered by supporters like billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, but some have also drawn criticism, including from economists, for potential hikes in federal spending.

Democrats on Sunday defended Harris’s economic proposals as targeting many Americans’ key needs, and they noted that her speech — delivered roughly three weeks into her sudden presidential campaign — represented the start of her policy pitch, with more detail to come.

“I think people are reading too much into what has been put out there,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), a co-chair of the Harris campaign, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” dismissing attacks on Harris’s proposal. “The biggest part of our personal budgets go toward housing, go toward health care, go toward the fundamentals, and she’s got a plan on all those fronts to help more Americans be able to get a path to prosperity.”

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) did not explicitly endorse Harris’s new policies but said his caucus was ready to work with her to “drive costs down.”

Jeffries also defended Harris’s focus on price gouging, which even some left-leaning experts have criticized as a distraction from the major causes of inflation.

“Part of the challenge that many everyday Americans have felt is that price gouging is occurring by some bad actors,” Jeffries said. “And it’s reasonable for us to look into how we can stop it from occurring. Vice President Kamala Harris is simply saying we have to make sure that markets are properly functioning.”

While GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has attempted to frame Harris’s plan to combat price-gouging as Soviet-style price controls — an argument that some of his allies repeated Sunday — Democrats rejected the comparison and offered their own explanations. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said that her proposals aligned with existing state laws.

“You’ve heard corporations talk about how they raised prices even above what the inflationary amount would be. And you saw that their profits went up significantly during that time period,” Pritzker said. “So I think it’s not unreasonable for her to say that the federal government should do what many states have already done, which is focus on that price gouging.”

He also credited Harris’s proposal to offer a $25,000 credit for first-time home buyers as showing she’s attuned to the needs of middle- and working-class Americans. “It is impossible in this country right now, with interest rates as high as they are, for people to buy a house,” Pritzker said.

Republicans, meanwhile, focused on Harris’s past stances and sought to link her to President Joe Biden’s economic policies. Voters have persistently said that they have low confidence in Biden’s handling of the economy, and polls still give the edge to Trump over Harris on economic issues.

“The most absurd thing that Kamala says at her rallies is, ‘On day one, I’m going to tackle the food and housing affordability crisis in this country,’” Vance said on “Fox News Sunday,” criticizing his rival’s record. “Day one for Kamala Harris was 3½ years ago, and everything that she’s done has made the affordability problem worse.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), speaking on “Meet the Press,” called Harris “the most liberal person” ever nominated to be president, pointing to her previous support for a ban on fracking, the elimination of private health insurance and other liberal positions she adopted ahead of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Harris has sought to distance herself from those past stances.

“A nightmare for Harris is to defend her policy choices. Every day we’re not talking about her policy choices as vice president and what she would do as president … is a good day for her and a bad day for us,” Graham said, delivering a warning to Trump to avoid personal attacks on Harris, an ongoing frustration for Trump’s campaign advisers. “If you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”

For their part, Democrats sought to shift discussion of Harris’s proposals to topics such as health care, where they hold a notable advantage in polls.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), another co-chair of the Harris campaign, touted last week’s White House announcement of prescription-drug savings, calling it “one of the most important pieces” of Harris’s economic policy rollout and crediting her with casting the deciding vote on the legislation that empowered Medicare to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs. The White House has said that Medicare beneficiaries can expect to save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs on prescription drugs when the new prices take effect in 2026.

Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” what Democrats could do to stop losing support in rural areas, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) touted Harris’s economic plan as addressing Americans’ daily concerns.

“It goes right to the heart of how you support your family,” Beshear said, citing her tax-relief proposals. “It goes to affording health care and capping overall pharmaceutical costs.”

Trump, meanwhile, last week signaled support for expanding tariffs, another topic of Sunday’s shows. Many economic experts note that such moves create more inflation and add costs for American consumers.

“A tariff is paid by consumers. It’s the equivalent of a new Trump tax,” Coons argued.

Graham countered on “Meet the Press”: “I support his idea that whatever a country does to us on tariffs, we’re going to do to you.” He offered a hypothetical: “If you make a car in Europe, and we put a 10 percent tariff on it, and we make a car in America and sell it to Europe, and they put a 30 percent tariff on our cars, we’re going to 30 percent.”