Congressional Democrats Abandon Kamala Harris' Economic Proposals - 'It's Not A Serious Policy'

After economists and the mainstream media slammed Vice President Kamala Harris' economic policies, some Democrats on Capitol Hill have refused to defend her ideas, telling allies privately that her proposals would never pass through Congress. The Democratic presidential candidate's proposals, which Republicans have critiqued as "price controls," are an attempt to distance herself from Bidenomics and the inflationary record of the Biden-Harris administration.

The Harris campaign explained earlier this month that taking on high grocery prices, created by the trillions of spending passed during the Biden-Harris administration, will be a major priority in Harris' first 100 days as president. The campaign emphasized that the proposal is "the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries—setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can't unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries."

The Harris team pointed to the meat-packing companies as one segment of the food industry that is particularly consolidated, arguing that "the lack of competition gives these middlemen the power to drive down earnings for farmers while driving up prices for consumers." The vice president's proposal comes as she struggles to convince voters that she can be trusted to steer the economy in the right direction and attempts to distance herself from President Biden's economic record. The Democrat's policy team reportedly will lay out an initiative to help small businesses compete with the larger meat-packing corporations, which, Harris argues, have unfairly inflated prices since the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Following the announcement, the campaign faced considerable backlash from economists across the political spectrum, and the Wall Street Journal was particularly critical of the short-sighted policy. According to POLITICO, the backlash has caused Democrat lawmakers to distance themselves from Harris' proposal by explaining to allies that the policy isn't viable. Instead, it is being used as a messaging tactic to show that she cares about rising prices at the grocery store. "It's clear to me these are very general, very lofty goals," one lawmaker said about the proposal. 

"I honestly still don't know how this would work," another congressional Democrat told the outlet. The Harris campaign's proposals are an attempt to shift blame for the rising prices at the grocery store away from the inflationary spending of the Biden-Harris administration and onto companies despite a lack of substantial evidence. The campaign refused to elicit advice from grocery industry groups, leading many in the industry to assume that the policy was unserious. "That's why I think it's not a serious policy. I'm sure it polls well," a food industry official said. "But it's an obvious effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation."

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