In an interview on “60 Minutes” with host Bill Whitaker that, far from being the softball many on the conservative side of things expected, turned out to be a real interview in which she did horribly, Kamala Harris had her economic plans shredded by a host who asked for details that she was either unable or unwilling to provide.
Particularly, Bill Whitaker asked how Vice President harris plans to finance her planned agenda given that Congress is polarized and very likely unwilling to go along with tax hikes. Kamala, as could be expected, couldn’t give a straight answer and instead kept rambling about mostly unrelated subjects.
That very awkward part of the interview came when Whitaker asked her how she will fund her expensive-looking agenda. Kamala didn’t give an answer. Instead, she started rambling about small businesses, telling him, that she sees small business as being the critical ingredient of the American economy.
She said, “My plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class, and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy.” Interrupting her and demanding an actual answer, Whitaker said, “But pardon me, Madam Vice President, the question was, how are you going to pay for it?”
Harris then started rambling about another one of her talking points, saying that the very wealthy in America need to start paying their “fair share” in taxes and that she will be the one who makes that happen. “It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations,” Harris told him.
Whitaker wasn’t having it. Firing back at her generalities, Whitaker noted that Congress is divided and polarized, and a Republican House or Senate would be entirely unwilling to hike taxes to fund her economic agenda “We’re dealing with the real world here,” Whitaker told Kamala as she unrealistically ranted about hiking taxes.
At another point in the rambling economic section of the interview, Harris tried to frame the economy as being great other than taxes, saying, “We now have historic low unemployment in America among all groups of people. We now have an economy that is thriving by all macroeconomic measures. And, to your point, prices are still too high.” Watch the interview here:
This is not the first time that Harris has been asked how she will pay for her expansive and expensive agenda and given a rambling response instead of a real answer. “Can you explain how you’re going to pay for those, and can you give us a sense of what other policies we want to unveil?” Harris was asked in another incident.
She said, “I mean, you just look at it in terms of what we are talking about, for example, around children and the child tax credit and extending the EITC that it’s at $6,000 for the first year of a child’s life. The return on that investment, in terms of what that will do and what it will pay for, will be tremendous.”
She continued, “We’ve seen it when we did it the first year of our administration reduced, we reduced child poverty by over 50% so that’s a lot of the work. And then what we’re doing in terms of the tax credits, we know that there’s a great return on investment. And when we increase home ownership in America, what that means in terms of increasing the tax base, not to mention property tax base, what that does to fund schools, again, return on investment.”
She then rambled about it paying “for itself,” saying, “I think it’s a mistake for any person who talks about public policy to not critically evaluate how you measure the return on investment when you are strengthening neighborhood, strengthening communities, and in particular, the economy of those communities, and investing in a broad-based economy. Everybody benefits, and it pays for itself.” Watch that here:
"*" indicates required fields