Voters Don’t Trust a Harris Economy

LEFT: President Donald J. Trump participates in a Sinclair Broadcast Group town hall event Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) RIGHT: Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a moderated conversation on reproductive rights with model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen, Thursday, June 20, 2024, in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe)

In tight polls, one thing is consistent: Americans don’t trust Kamala Harris with the economy. And why should they? The Biden/Harris administration has done nothing to improve upon the successful policies of Donald Trump and instead did everything they could to destroy that success. David Catron reports in The American Spectator:

Since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic Party’s 2024 ticket, most national and swing state polls have produced predictable results. Before Harris was installed as the new nominee, most surveys portended a victory by former President Donald Trump in November. Now his national lead has ostensibly evaporated and it appears plausible that Harris could win. There is, however, a noticeable pattern in the latest polls that suggests otherwise. Most surveys, including those which show a tied race or even a slim Harris lead, indicate that voters don’t trust her on the economy any more than they trusted Biden on the same issue.

CNBC’s latest All-America Economic Survey, for example, found this: “On the economy, by 2-to-1, Americans think they will be better off financially under Trump.” The latest CBS News poll shows similar results: “On having policies that will improve peoples’ finances: Harris opens in the same position as Mr. Biden was in July, trailing Trump substantially.” Specifically, 45 percent of voters said the former president would improve their financial situation while only 25 percent said the same about VP Harris. The most recent Wall Street Journal poll found that, among “persuadable” voters, “Only 12 percent say Harris is better able to handle the economy than Trump, while 61 percent say Trump is the better economic steward.”

It’s clear that the Harris campaign understands the political peril such sentiments present, but their response has been none too creative. As the Washington Post reports, she has purloined one of Trump’s signature proposals: “Vice President Kamala Harris is echoing an idea first proposed by her opponent, Donald Trump, by pledging that she would push to eliminate taxes on tips.” Her epiphany on this issue is unlikely to impress many, considering that Trump first proposed getting rid of the tax last June and the plan was subsequently included in the 2024 GOP platform. But this is worse than merely pilfering a policy proposal from her Republican opponent, it is hypocritical. As Fox Business’ Elizabeth MacDonald points out:

Kamala Harris’s first big policy idea is to steal Trump’s “no taxes on tips,” when she backed Democrats’ $80b for more IRS audits including on tip income. The Biden-Harris Admin also launched a novel new IRS crackdown on tips, getting the IRS inside the door at bars & restaurants to directly monitor tips at the cash register, “at point-of-sale.” She also backed the $1.7T spending legislation expecting taxpayers to report their $600 phone app transactions to the IRS without she and the Senate reading the bill (later dropped as untenable).

Harris didn’t merely support this weaponization of the IRS, she played a crucial role in getting it passed in the Senate and sending it to President Biden’s desk for signature. As Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) noted on X: “As V.P., Kamala was the deciding vote on the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ that gave the IRS $80 billion of your tax dollars to make sure they tax every tip workers earn! Kamala Harris is a total fraud!” This isn’t likely to inspire confidence among the voters that Harris will follow through with her pledge to eliminate taxes on tips or anything else. Her history invites skepticism. She voted against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) when she was a U.S. Senator and has subsequently advocated repealing the statute.

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