Harris’s Economic Plan Is Bidenomics II

The Vice President lays out 82 pages of more spending, more taxes, more regulation, more government

WSJ editorial. 

"Swing voters say they don’t know enough about Kamala Harris’s economic plans. Voila, her campaign on Wednesday released an 82-page “New Way Forward” document. Did her campaign ask ChatGPT to describe her progressive policies in moderate rhetoric using the verbiage of free-market economists?

“I’m a capitalist,” she declared on Wednesday as she promised to “seek practical solutions to problems.” Yet any inspection of the details shows she‘s offering the same policies as Mr. Biden, only more so. Here’s a cheat-sheet:

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•Higher taxes to make “corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.” Without defining “fair,” she endorses the $5 trillion in tax hikes in Mr. Biden’s budget, including a 25% tax on the unrealized capital gains on top earners. As far as we can tell, she differs from the President only in calling for a 33% top capital gains rate instead of 44.6%. She calls these “commonsense tax reforms,” though they’d be the biggest tax hike in history.

•New and bigger entitlements. She’ll need all those taxes to finance all of her new spending. She wants to revive the Build Back Better plan that failed in the Democratic Senate to support entitlements for child care, preschool, long-term care and paid leave. No costs attached, but figure it in the trillions.

•More transfer payments, including a restoration of the March 2021 Covid bill’s $3,600 child tax credit, a new $6,000 credit for families with newborns, and tripling the earned income tax credit for childless adults. She calls all these “tax cuts,” but they are income redistribution through the tax code and welfare since they go to people who don’t pay taxes.

•More housing subsidies, including an “historic expansion” of the low-income housing tax credit, a “first-ever tax incentive for building affordable homes for first-time homebuyers” and a $40 billion “local innovation fund for housing expansion.”

Such government subsidies would be conditioned on rules that require localities to “cut red tape” and developers to employ “innovative building and construction techniques.” This is a euphemism for putting the feds in control of local zoning and building codes. Will new homes have to come with solar panels as they must in California?

She also proposes a $25,000 grant for first-time homebuyers, which would fuel increased demand and higher prices. Unmentioned but not forgotten is her proposal to use the tax code to impose nationwide rent control, though she expressly threatens to use antitrust action against landlords who “dramatically raise rents.”

•More student loan forgiveness. Her euphemism for this is to “end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt.”

•More government control of healthcare. She’d expand and make permanent the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) sweetened ObamaCare subsidies, which are set to expire in 2025. Millions enrolled in ObamaCare plans pay no premiums owing to the subsidies, which average about $6,000.

ObamaCare plans are tightly regulated, which has reduced choice and competition. She wants to do the same to employer plans in part by imposing a $2,000 cap on their out-of-pocket drug costs. The result will be higher premiums. She also proposes to “accelerate” the IRA’s Medicare drug price controls, which will slow bio-pharmaceutical innovation.

•More industrial policy. She proposes funding small business with “low- or zero-interest loans,” beyond what the Small Business Administration already does. She also wants $100 billion in tax credits for investment in data centers, semiconductors, biotechnology and “sustainable materials” that would “reward” businesses that use union labor and locate plants in “longstanding manufacturing, farming, and energy communities.” That is, where Democrats can pass out favors to businesses and interests that support them.

•Price controls. She will “revitalize competition” by “investigating and prosecuting price-fixing” and passing “the first-ever federal ban on price gouging” for groceries. This means Elizabeth Warren acolytes in her Administration will dictate egg prices in Racine, Wis.

•More union gifts. She promises to “prevent misclassification of employees, and override so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws that prevent workers from freely organizing.” Where’s the media misinformation police? State right-to-work laws give workers a choice of whether to belong to unions. Her labor model is California, which has banned most freelance work.

•More green-energy largesse. She wants to “build on efforts” in the IRA to “lower energy costs” and ensure “that we never again have to rely on foreign oil”—i.e., more subsidies for solar panels and EVs on top of the $1.2 trillion already in the IRA pipeline.

All of this and more adds up to a disguised bid to exceed even Mr. Biden’s historic expansion of government. The feds now control some 24% of GDP, and this would grow the share. If you loved Bidenomics, she’s your candidate."