Before a jubilant crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris laid out her economic agenda on Friday, her first major policy proposal since President Joe Biden abruptly dropped out of the race in July.
It was Harris’ latest effort during her lightning-fast White House campaign to reintroduce herself to voters who know relatively little about Biden’s lieutenant of the past nearly four years.
Harris’ speech wasn’t heavy on details. But she promised to prioritize lowering the cost of living for struggling Americans — including Black and brown communities — by curbing the cost of housing, food and health care. She also promised to crack down on corporate profiteering and work to raise the federal minimum wage.
In a sense, Harris offered a renewed version of the American Dream.
“This election, I believe very strongly, is about two very different visions for our nation,” she told the enthusiastic crowd. “One — ours — looks to the future, and the other looks to the past.”
Harris said that if elected, she would direct federal funds to build 3 million new homes and provide $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers over the next four years.
And for homebuilders who are building a home for these people for the first time, there should be a tax deduction, she noted.
Harris also personalized her speech, talking about how happy her mother was when she saved enough money to buy a house for the family, and how many Americans struggle to make ends meet.
“Look, the bills are piling up. Food, rent, gas, school uniforms, prescription medications,” she said. “After all that, for many families, there’s not much left at the end of the month.”
The emphasis on the need to cut costs may appeal to black Americans, who are more likely than white Americans to face uncertainty even as the economy recovers.
“These are the kinds of policies that address vulnerability,” Michael Neal, a senior fellow in the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, told Capital B. “We know that health care and housing are two of the largest cost drivers in the Personal Consumption Expenditures measure of inflation. We know that the price of groceries tends to be very volatile. And we know that Black Americans have lower and more volatile incomes that amplify these higher costs.”
Another area also deserves our collective attention: unemployment. Black Americans not only have lower incomes — they also have higher unemployment rates.
The most recent available Black unemployment rate is from July 2024: 6.3%. The rates over the past few months are low by historical standards, according to a CNN analysis in June, though they are slightly higher than the record low of 4.8% set in April 2023.
“The potential for high unemployment affects everyone,” Neal said. “But we know from the data that black Americans are more likely to be unemployed, and during economic downturns, their unemployment rates tend to rise faster.”
Kristin Powell, executive director of the Black to the Future Action Fund, expressed similar sentiments earlier this year.
She told Capital B that when it comes to campaigning, it can be politically risky to focus too much on the strength of the economy (low inflation, low unemployment) when the day-to-day economic realities of black Americans aren’t so rosy.
Black Americans “are worried about low wages, about the cost of housing, about their pocketbooks,” she said, adding that focusing “just on how the economy is doing better than ever doesn’t reflect what people are really feeling.”
Harris visited Raleigh about a week after the Black to the Future Action Fund released its nearly 60-page economic agenda, based on a 2023 survey of more than 200,000 Black Americans in all 50 states.
It is intended as a road map to inform elected officials about the key economic concerns of Black communities, including some of the same themes Harris raised: raising wages and worker protections, lowering health care and education costs, and expanding access to affordable housing.
“We have to start imagining what we want and not be so afraid to break out of what is,” Alicia Garza, the founder and former executive director of the Black to the Future Action Fund, said at a luncheon last week, echoing the bold, progressive vision Harris champions at her rallies.
Friday’s event was Harris’ eighth visit to the prized swing state this year. She leads former President Donald Trump in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, and the two are tied in Georgia, according to a Cook Political Report survey of seven swing states released Wednesday. Trump leads in Nevada.
Harris used her stop in the Tar Heel State to further distinguish herself from Trump.
“As for Donald Trump, well, he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which 45 million Americans rely on,” she said. “That would take us back to a time when insurance companies could turn away people with pre-existing conditions.”
At just the right moment, the crowd began to chant one of the campaign slogans: “We’re not going back.”
This story has been updated.
The post How Harris’ vision for the economy can boost black communities appeared first on Capital B News.
