Aug 16, 2024
Kamala Harris Unveils SURPRISING Economic Policy Proposal
Vice President Kamala Harris is shocking skeptics with a populist economic agenda, but can she pull it off?
- 10 minutes
And today, by virtually every measure,
our economy is the strongest in the world.
Still, we know that many Americans
don't yet feel that progress
in their daily lives.
[00:00:16]
Costs are still too high.
And on a deeper level for too many people,
no matter how much they work, it feels
so hard to just be able to get ahead.
Today, Kamala Harris announced
the first set of proposals
designed to allay some of those fears or
concerns about the state of the economy.
[00:00:34]
And for a number of those, we don't have
a lot of specifics, but we do have some
general guidelines and a few specifics
that I think are worthy of discussion.
Now, the first proposal that she made
has to do with fighting price gouging.
We're going to delve in greater
detail into that
a little bit later on the program,
but I want to throw out just a few of the,
[00:00:52]
I guess, the headline versions of this,
and then see what the panel thinks
about this as a group of proposals.
So you have a number of different areas.
First, on housing,
she's proposing a $25,000 subsidy
for first time home buyers,
as well as tax credits to incentivize
housing construction and policies to
[00:01:10]
prevent Wall Street investors from buying
homes in bulk to resell at a premium.
Which sounds like I don't know
so much about the subsidy, but those
second parts sound like everything that
Anna Kasparian has been shouting we need
for a number of years now,
so I can't wait for her to get back
and find out what she thinks about that.
[00:01:26]
But in addition to that,
to control some of the cost of housing,
including for people who rent.
She's endorsed legislation
that would crack down on the use
of property management software
that has allegedly been used by landlords
to fix apartment rent prices,
effectively allowing all of the landlords
in an area to function almost like
[00:01:44]
a cartel when it comes to establishing
higher rent prices
and make sure that nobody breaks that
and thus not allowing supply and demand
to function as it should.
In addition to that, she has proposed
helping with the elimination of medical
debt for millions of Americans, including
by having the federal government buy
[00:02:01]
up medical debt at pennies on the dollar,
a cap on prescription drug costs beyond
just the ones that have already been
announced, including earlier this week,
as well as a general cap on the cost
of insulin at $35 for all Americans.
That is already the case
for some Americans.
[00:02:17]
Depending on what your insurance is.
She wants that to be a general rule
for all Americans, as well
as bringing back the child tax credit.
So not just the child tax credit as it
used to exist, but in an enhanced form,
including a $6,000 per child to families
for the first year of a baby's life.
[00:02:35]
Which sounds like exactly what people
like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson and
Elon Musk and Joe Rogan have been saying,
we need we need
to people need to have babies.
Well, make it a little bit more
financially feasible.
And then in addition
to that super sized first year,
generally bringing back the child tax
credit for as a continuing thing.
[00:02:55]
And so this is a lot to put out.
At one time we were sort of expecting
that she would use maybe her speech
at the DNC to announce some policies.
Instead, she's going into the DNC with all
this, perhaps making it so that speakers
throughout the week can sort of focus
on and stress some of these policies.
[00:03:10]
But it's a lot. What do you think?
Yes, I want to make comments
about how this plays generally
in terms of the election in a second, and
how this relates to why she wasn't doing
interviews, but first bringing it down.
I won't go through all of them,
just a couple of them.
[00:03:25]
Preventing Wall Street investors
from buying homes in bulk
to sell at a resale at a premium.
So that one could be awesome
if you stop private equity
from buying the homes, that'll make by far
the biggest difference.
But the way that it is phrased
makes me very skeptical.
Buying homes in bulk, why does it have
to be in bulk and reselling at a premium?
[00:03:44]
Who's going to determine
whether it's at a premium?
Those look, like,
purposely put in loopholes so that they
don't actually have to do this.
So I'm keeping it real with you guys.
Tax incentives are usually the number
one thing that pass because, you know,
[00:04:00]
anything that's perceived as a tax cut
as a much better chance of success,
partly because rich people will say yes
and donors will say yes.
Right now it affects
people beyond rich folks.
And in fact, this could really help
in bringing home,
[00:04:16]
making housing more affordable overall
if you apply all of these things.
And, and I don't know that I would
do all four, you know,
but you don't have to worry about that.
You'd be lucky to get one of them passed.
Okay.
So elimination of medical debt
for millions of Americans.
Well, I got good news for you on that,
especially if you old medical debt.
[00:04:33]
That one is the most likely to pass. Why?
That's one of the more
expensive ones, etc.
Because companies hold that debt
and taxpayers would be paying it.
So those companies are going to grease
every politician in Washington.
[00:04:49]
Oh yeah.
Yeah, this is for the average American.
And it is. It is.
But this is the type of thing that passes
when the Democrats think like,
oh, that's good optically,
but the donors are still happy.
So that's the highest percentage chance,
a cap on prescription drug costs.
I'll believe it when I see it.
[00:05:05]
So they've got one drug
that they're super happy about, insulin.
And that is only for Medicare.
They're trying to make it
so that it applies to everyone.
That okay, good.
I'll take it on the one drug
they're still bragging about the ten drugs
that's coming later in 2026.
Good. I'll take it.
[00:05:20]
But not nearly enough.
And she did not propose,
to the best of my ability
to interpret her language on this, totally
negotiating drug prices on all drugs,
which, at a minimum, I think that's a rare
miss here politically, because, of course,
[00:05:36]
you should propose that.
I mean, I can tell you there's no
way they're going to do it,
but you lose nothing by proposing it.
Oh, a broken promise.
That's Democrat 101, right?
Let alone Republicans.
And in terms of the child tax credit
or the $6,000 for your, you know,
[00:05:53]
first year of a child's life.
At most you'll get one of those,
but all of these are very, very popular.
So now that leads me to my general point,
which is well played, really well played.
So there's the policy and then there's the
politics and the terms of the politics.
[00:06:10]
This puts Trump and the Republicans
on the defensive.
So they're having to say, oh no, no, no,
we shouldn't do those proposals.
And what people hear is we should
keep housing prices really high.
We should keep drug prices really high.
You should be stuck with medical debt.
[00:06:26]
So when they go to make
the counterargument, they're screwed.
So whoever's handling strategy here
for the Harris Wallace campaign,
well tip of the hat.
This is good stuff. This is great stuff.
And so and I say whoever
because theoretically, Jen O'Malley Dillon
[00:06:46]
is the campaign manager.
She was Biden's campaign manager,
but I saw her manage a couple
of campaigns and she didn't do this.
Okay.
So I don't know if it's proof
that they brought in.
ET cetera.
But the person who gets the most credit
is the person making the decisions,
and that's Kamala Harris.
So she's made one right decision
after another after another.
[00:07:02]
I honestly, for coming from
a Democratic leader, I'm shocked.
So this is a great idea
overall in politics.
And you might even get a couple
of policy wins out of it.
Hey, don't scroll away,
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Because before the video continues,
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[00:07:19]
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I'll make it even simpler Jake.
Good for them for talking about policy
like because now we just saw Trump
is talking about name calling
and they're talking about policy.
[00:07:35]
And one of the reasons that Trump can't
talk about policy is because their policy
really is project 2025, which, you know,
they want to take away rights.
They want to just, you know,
make this a dictatorship.
So there's not a lot
that they have to offer.
And so as you said,
they played offense by coming out
[00:07:51]
and laying all these policy items out.
And you're right, it's going to listen.
Presidents come all the time.
They go, I'm going to make it.
So everyone's going to be better off
and there's going to be, you know, the
country is going to be better in this way
and that way and this way and that way.
But ultimately, it's not a kingdom.
You can't just make that happen.
[00:08:09]
It's got to go through Congress.
Some of these will pass,
some of these won't.
Some of these will have a hard time.
But hopefully some
of these things do help.
I mean, I'm always shocked at these people
that you see in the Trump rallies
and some of these rallies that are
of lower income that are supporting these,
[00:08:29]
anti, you know, lower
and middle income level, policies.
And they just they just
believe everything that's said.
To your point, the right is going to come
out and just say this is communism.
They just throw around
the word communism, Socialism.
[00:08:46]
They're trying to make this into Russia.
Yeah, they're trying to make
this into Russia
by helping out people on the bottom half
and in the, the lower and middle class.
And so good for them.
And and you're right,
I'd be interested to see how they're going
[00:09:01]
to turn around and defend.
The Republicans are going to defend, you
know, not lowering rent or not lowering,
drug costs or not lowering, you know,
not not extending the child tax credit.
I mean, JD Vance even said he wanted
to extend extend the child tax credit,
[00:09:17]
so maybe they'll just say,
oh, they're trying to copy us.
Like they said when Kamala said,
I don't want to tax tips.
Trump said that was my idea.
So, I mean, if ultimately they get
to a point where the right is just going,
that was my idea, then.
Jeez, now you're basically getting
the same, ideas, but from someone who's
[00:09:36]
a lot more pleasant than, downer Donnie.
Well, there's a lot here.
As we said, we do need more specifics.
There's also a lot of areas
of government policy, obviously,
that are not included in this.
This is sort of focused
around costs of things.
But, you know, we don't know exactly
what our approach to energy will be
or climate Ukraine or Gaza,
a lot of different areas, infrastructure.
[00:09:55]
And so we do have to see
and we also have to see on all those areas
what Donald Trump is going to do.
He has said that he'll give
us his plans in two weeks.
And so I can't wait to find out.
Maybe Harris will bring up
some of these other areas in her speech.
[00:10:10]
But for now, we are going to take a break.
When we come back,
we're going to, as I said,
dive into the price gouging part of this.
Thanks for watching The Young Turks
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