The Most Striking Proposals in Harris’s Economic Plan

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has released an economic plan with some bold proposals.

The vice president, who will be speaking in North Carolina on Friday, has several policy proposals , including eliminating medical debt for millions of Americans, banning price gouging of food and groceries, capping the prices of insulin and other prescriptions, and granting a $6,000 tax credit for newborn children in their first year.

Since President Biden withdrew from the 2024 election last month and Harris took on the Democratic nomination, Harris’s campaign has not been heavy on specific policies. This is one of the first, if not the first, detailed plans the campaign has released. Not only does it continue Biden’s policy of economic intervention, it goes much further than many of his proposals.

For example, Harris’s plan also includes assistance of up to $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, and the ban on price gouging would take punitive measures against grocery stores whose price hikes are deemed excessive. Parts of Harris’s plan have already drawn criticism from some Democrats.

“The good-case scenario is price gouging is a message, not a reality, and the bad-case scenario is that this is a real proposal,” said economist Jason Furman, who worked in the Obama administration. “You’ll end up with bigger shortages, less supply, and ultimately risk higher prices and worse outcomes for consumers if you try to enforce this in a real way, which I don’t know if they would or wouldn’t do.”

Harris has already faced pressure from executives and business leaders hoping to change antitrust policies and push out Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. While antitrust policy is not part of the economic policies just proposed by Harris, her willingness to offer transformative measures that could drastically improve the lives of many Americans may indicate that she’s willing to take on corporations to the same extent as Biden, and perhaps even further than that.

After all, her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was renowned in Minnesota for instituting one of the most generous child tax credit plans in the country, free school meals, and paid family leave. Harris’s plan is sure to win over much of the left, at least when it comes to economics. Perhaps the next step is overhauling Biden’s disastrous Israel policy , which continues to cause a humanitarian crisis through supporting the brutal war on Gaza.