What a Kamala Harris administration could mean for your wallet

With trillions of dollars in tax cuts set to expire after 2025, experts say taxes and the federal budget deficit will be key issues for Harris to address as part of her policy agenda.

If Congress doesn’t act, dozens of provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), including lowering federal income tax brackets, expanding the standard deduction, and increasing the child tax credit, will expire. That could mean higher taxes for more than 60% of taxpayers, according to the Tax Foundation.

Broadly speaking, Harris would likely agree with most or all of what Biden and his administration have promoted, “especially in the big picture,” said Garrett Watson, senior policy analyst and modeling manager at the Tax Foundation.

Biden wants to raise taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.

Watson said the big question is whether Harris will stick to Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.

At a political event in North Carolina last week, Harris also touted her administration’s expansion of the child tax credit during the pandemic, a top priority for Biden and Democrats.

But Watson noted that Harris expressed some differences with Biden on some points before she became vice president.

During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris campaigned on repealing the TCJA corporate tax rate, which cut the top tax rate from 35% to 21%. Her repeal would bring the top rate back to 35%. Biden, meanwhile, wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% in 2024.

Kate Dore

During her 2020 presidential run, Harris supported a “Medicare for All” plan to expand access to health care and reduce costs for consumers, describing health care as a “right” rather than a “privilege.”

Under the proposal, all Americans would transition to Medicare health plans provided by public or private insurers over a 10-year period.

Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, said Harris, if selected as the nominee, is unlikely to push the plan in the current presidential race because Democrats appear to be united around Biden’s “kitchen table” proposal to cut health care costs.

For example, Biden signed the Inflation Control Act of 2022, making ACA health insurance plans more affordable for millions of families by extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that will last through 2025. He also capped insulin copays for Medicare beneficiaries at $35 per month.

Altman said Harris would likely seek to expand health insurance under the ACA and Medicaid, and would likely try to expand prescription drug price negotiations, which currently only apply to Medicare recipients and some drugs, he said.

And abortion is likely to be a “defining issue” in the 2024 election, according to Fatima Goss Graves, executive director of the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund. Harris is one of the Democratic Party’s “strongest and most effective voices” on protecting abortion access, Graves said.

Abortion is an economic issue, Altman said.

He said women generally have to weigh financial security against career advancement when choosing to have children, and women in states that ban abortions after the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade in 2022 will have to take time off work and pay to travel out of state for the procedure.

Greg Iacurci

Harris helped push through Biden’s historic initiative to forgive student loan debt and experts say she is likely to continue the president’s efforts.

But as a candidate in the 2020 presidential race, Harris proposed a debt relief program that was criticized as overly complicated and narrow in scope: To qualify, borrowers would have had to meet conditions such as receiving Pell Grants and starting businesses in disadvantaged areas.

Biden, by contrast, supports broader debt forgiveness and is pursuing a plan to reduce or eliminate the debt balances of tens of millions of Americans.

A White House spokesman recently told CNBC that Harris was proud to have worked with Biden to forgive $167 billion in student loan debt for about 5 million Americans so far, and that the vice president plans to provide further relief to borrowers, she said.

Current U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona wrote in an X post Sunday night that he has his “full support” for Harris.

Harris has also fought against bad schools and for relief for debt collectors.

As California Attorney General, Harris investigated and sued Corinthian Colleges, winning a $1.1 billion judgment against the now-disbanded for-profit conglomerate. The U.S. Department of Education ultimately investigated the colleges and forgave $5.8 billion in student loan debt for 560,000 former Corinthian students in 2022.

Annie Nova

One of Harris’ signature proposals before she became vice president was the “Raise the Middle Class Act,” which would provide low- and middle-income workers with a tax credit of up to $6,000 a year on top of the benefits they already receive, reducing the wealth gap. To pay for it, she proposed repealing the Trump tax cuts.

Since then, the cost of living has only skyrocketed, hitting working-class Americans especially hard, said Laura Feldkamp, ​​a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School.

In that context, Feldkamp said there is a “good case” for resurfacing tax credits for people below a certain income threshold.

Jessica Dickler

Harris has been a vocal advocate for affordable housing policies both during her time as Vice President and as a Senator.

“Every American deserves affordable housing,” Harris wrote in a July 16 post on X, referring to the Biden administration’s call to limit rent increases to 5% for landlords who own 50 or more rental units or risk losing their federal tax breaks.

More recently, Governor Harris announced the recipients of $85 million in grants under the Pathways to Removing Housing Barriers, a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at lowering housing costs and rents for families.

In May, Governor Harris announced a $5.5 billion budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to promote affordable housing, invest in economic growth, build wealth, and address homelessness in the United States. The funds will be allocated across six different HUD programs.

Ana Teresa Sola

Harris has taken aim at the gender pay gap with her plan to eliminate discriminatory wage practices and penalize companies that don’t comply.

Under the plan she unveiled in 2019, companies with 100 or more employees would be required to report gender-specific pay and total compensation, as well as the percentage of women in leadership positions, and obtain “equal pay certification.” Companies that do not have this certification would be subject to a penalty of 1% of their average daily profits for the previous financial year.

According to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the National Women’s Law Center, women earn just 84 cents for every dollar men earn, but the pay gap is significantly wider for Black and Latina women.

Columbia’s Feldkamp said it might be helpful to reconsider efforts to require companies to disclose pay data.

“Various forces create inequalities, but analysing the numbers can highlight issues we want to improve,” she said.

Jessica Dickler