Kamala Harris is well known for her forceful defense of abortion rights, her role within the Biden administration on immigration and border security, and her legacy as a prosecutor and attorney general of California.
But the economy is a central election issue, and there, her positions and policy goals haven’t yet been as clearly defined.
Her record does reveal, however, some clues about her priorities, including a focus on low-income workers, women, small businesses and middle-class families.
As vice president, Harris has largely moved in lockstep with President Biden on economic issues, and some analysts see this record as a road map. “In general, we think she’ll pick up the Biden-Harris mantle,” policy analysts at Evercore ISI said in a note Tuesday.
Before her time in the administration, she sometimes differed with President Biden—specifically in trade and climate-related policy—often by favoring bigger governmental interventions in the economy.
She shed light on some of her economic priorities Monday in an address to campaign staff. As president, she said, she would push for paid family leave and affordable child care.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said. “Because we here know when our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
Spokespeople for the Harris campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The economic challenge
Harris’s most immediate hurdle might be overcoming Americans’ dour views on the economic legacy of her own administration. Under Biden, inflation spiked to a 40-year high in 2022. The effects ranged from soaring prices at the grocery store to Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes that contributed to many Americans finding it harder to afford mortgages and buy homes.
Inflation has cooled, and many economists expect the Fed will cut interest rates by September. But Americans are still dealing with the fallout—as of last month, the Labor Department reported that consumer prices were up 19.5% since December 2020.
The vice president understands how high prices affect working families and has long focused on measures aimed at easing those burdens, says a former Harris adviser, who counseled on economic issues.
“What you see in that is a desire to really impact people’s lives on the ground,” the former adviser said, highlighting issues such as reducing drug prices and widening broadband access.
Early in the administration, Harris focused on helping small businesses access forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, especially in minority communities, said a former White House aide.
Some aspects of Biden’s economic legacy are more favorable. The economy expanded, and job growth has been strong , bringing the share of Americans in their prime working years—ages 25 to 54—who are employed to its highest level since 2001. Wage growth has outstripped inflation, especially so for low-income workers.
Taxes
As vice president, Harris has backed Biden’s tax agenda, which calls for making corporations and high-income households pay more while keeping taxes flat or cutting them for households making under $400,000 in income.
While she was a senator and presidential candidate, Harris’s signature tax proposal was the LIFT Act, which resembles a universal basic income and would have cost about $3 trillion over a decade. Harris’s plan would have provided a $3,000 tax credit for individuals and $6,000 for married couples. It would have phased out for middle-income and higher-income households so that only 10% of the benefits went to the top 40% of households, according to the Tax Policy Center .
The LIFT Act went nowhere in Congress, but its basic idea—income support through tax credits—is a core piece of Biden-Harris economic policy. In 2021, Democrats expanded the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit for childless workers. Those expansions expired at the end of 2021, but the Biden administration has said it wants to revive them.
Like all other Senate Democrats, Harris in 2017 voted against the Republican tax law that lowered individual and corporate tax rates and curtailed some tax breaks. As a presidential candidate in 2020, she backed a full repeal. The Biden administration position now calls for extending many of the tax cuts that expire after 2025 and pairing that with tax increases on high-income households.
Housing costs
Home prices are at record levels and rents remain stubbornly high , making housing prices another political vulnerability for the Biden administration.
Harris as senator sought to tackle high rental prices with legislation known as the Rent Relief Act, which would have provided a tax credit mostly for renters who make up to $100,000 and spend at least 30% of their gross income on rent and utilities. A group of Democrats continue to push for such legislation.
She has also touted her role as California attorney general in negotiating settlements with mortgage lenders that went well beyond an initial offer following the foreclosure crisis that stemmed from the 2007-09 recession.
Trade
Harris differed with Biden on two major trade deals while a Senate candidate and as a senator.
One was the Trans-Pacific Partnership , a sweeping trade pact between the U.S., Japan and 10 other countries around the Pacific reached during the Obama administration in 2015. Harris opposed the pact as a Senate candidate in 2016, telling media she was concerned about its impact on workers and the climate.
That trade deal effectively died after the election in late 2016, and Trump formally withdrew from the pact after taking office.
As a senator, Harris was one of 10 who voted against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a renegotiated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump frequently touts. She argued that environmental provisions were insufficient. Biden as a presidential candidate supported the replacement.
Wages and pay
During her 2020 presidential primary campaign, Harris put forth an array of proposals aimed at reducing inequality and narrowing wage gaps.
One was a plan to lower pay disparities between men and women by potentially charging companies with at least 100 workers for wage differences.
Another proposal was aimed at raising teachers’ pay to levels more in line with similar professionals—a gap that Harris’s campaign said amounted to $13,500 for the average teacher.
A third proposal, with an aim to increase entrepreneurship among Black Americans, called for $60 billion in investments in STEM education and historically Black colleges and other minority-serving institutions. Alongside that, Harris proposed investments aimed at helping Black entrepreneurs bring ideas to the market and get businesses off the ground.
Energy and climate
Harris was a proponent as senator and 2020 presidential candidate of the Green New Deal , which aimed to rapidly wean the U.S. economy off fossil fuels while overhauling the nation’s energy and transmission infrastructure.
Harris has also supported a comprehensive ban on fracking , while Biden staked out a position opposing the gas-drilling technique only on federal lands. Harris’s more aggressive positions were seen as a potential liability in Pennsylvania, a major gas producer and crucial swing state Biden would narrowly win in 2020.
In 2022, as vice president, Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate for the country’s largest investment in fighting climate change , the Inflation Reduction Act. That law included hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits for electric vehicles, renewable energy and manufacturing projects designed to create a supply chain for batteries and other critical components.
Write to Jon Kamp at Jon.Kamp@wsj.com , Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com and Justin Lahart at Justin.Lahart@wsj.com
