CNN anchor Dana Bash asked Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday why she hadn’t yet acted on her campaign plan to fix the economy, given she has “been vice president for three-and-a-half years.”
During her interview with the vice president and her running mate Tim Walz, Bash asked:
You are well aware that right now many Americans are struggling. There’s a crisis of affordability. One of your campaign themes is, “We’re not going back,” but I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy, specifically, because their groceries were less expensive, housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president?
Harris replied, “Well, let’s start with the fact that when Joe Biden and I came in office during the height of a pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost.”
She continued:
Hundreds of people a day were dying because of Covid, the economy had crashed, in large part all of that because of mismanagement by Donald Trump of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America, and today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%, a lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than any wealthy nation around the world, but you are right. Prices in particular for groceries are still too high.
The American people know it, I know it, which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries, for example, dealing with an issue like price gouging. What we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young families be able to take care of their children in their most formative years. What we need to do to bring down the cost of housing. My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time home buyers, so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home which is part of the American dream.
Bash then pointed out bluntly, “So, you have been vice president for three-and-a-half years,” before questioning, “The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?”
Harris argued, “Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy and we have done that. I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%. The work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was going to do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it.”
Harris then listed a number of policies that the Biden-Harris administration had achieved, before concluding, “I’ll say that that’s good work.”
Watch above via CNN.
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