As she runs the most truncated presidential campaign in modern American history, Vice President Kamala Harris has made lofty promises on issues that polls show voters care most about: the economy, abortion, gun policy and immigration.
Since President Biden dropped out of the race in July, Harris has tried to lay out her policy proposals, walking a fine line in embracing the work she has done as part of the Biden administration and making the case that she would do more than both her current boss and former President Trump to improve people’s lives and livelihoods.
Here is a look at some of Harris’ campaign promises and their chances for success if she is elected:
New homes and down-payment assistance
The promise: Amid a national shortage of affordable housing, Harris has called for the construction of 3 million new homes over four years, arguing that doing so would help satisfy demand and reduce costs.
This would be achieved, her campaign says, by offering new and expanded tax incentives for builders of starter homes and affordable housing, by cutting red tape and streamlining permitting processes that slow construction, and by making “certain federal lands eligible to be repurposed for new housing developments that families can afford.”
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She has called for the creation of a $40-billion “innovation fund” to support city and state governments finding ways to finance and encourage construction.
Harris is promising up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers who have paid their rent on time for two years — and more generous support for first-generation homeowners whose parents did not own a home. The Harris campaign estimates this could help more than 4 million households over four years.
Harris has said the assistance would come in the form of a tax credit.
What Harris has said: “Part of my plan, under my opportunity economy, is to give first-time home buyers a $25,000 down payment assistance so they can just get their foot in the door to be able to then engage in what will prove to be their opportunity to build intergenerational wealth.
“And here’s my personal experience coming at that: I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother was hardworking. She raised me and my sister, Maya. She saved up. And it was only by the time I was a teenager that she could afford to actually buy her first home,” Harris said in a September interview with the National Assn. of Black Journalists.
The reality: Increased housing supply would not have a big effect on home prices for several years, experts say.
Some economists have questioned the $25,000 down-payment assistance, warning that it could greatly increase demand before enough new units are built — increasing competition, further inflating housing costs, and driving up the already massive federal deficit.
The proposal would require congressional approval — which would hinge upon the partisan makeup of the House and Senate after the election.
The incentive would be less helpful for first-time buyers in California — where, according to Zillow, the average home is worth more than $773,000 — than it would in states with more affordable housing, like Texas, where the average home is worth about $301,000.
Restoring abortion rights
The promise: Harris, who has made reproductive rights a cornerstone of her campaign, says she would sign a bill from Congress writing abortion rights previously guaranteed by Roe vs. Wade into federal law.
She has promised to “never allow a national abortion ban to become law.” In September, Harris said she supported ending the Senate filibuster — a procedural tool that effectively requires 60 votes to pass legislation through the 100-member body — in order to codify Roe.
Harris has blamed former President Trump for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade two years ago and for the deaths of women who did not receive sufficient medical care because of strict abortion bans.
What Harris has said: “I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris said in a September interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.
“This is a healthcare crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis,” Harris said in a speech in Atlanta last month.
The reality: Codifying abortion rights as federal law would be challenging and would depend heavily upon which party controls Congress. Democrats are more likely to support legalizing abortion rights than Republicans. To pass Harris’ reproductive care priorities, Democrats would have to flip the GOP-controlled House and maintain their slim majority in the Senate. They face uphill battles in doing both.
A federal abortion rights law would need enough votes to overcome a Senate filibuster from Republicans. Ending the filibuster is controversial. Sen. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat-turned-independent from West Virginia, said he would not endorse Harris after she called for an end to the filibuster, which he called “the Holy Grail of democracy.”
In regard to codifying Roe vs. Wade, there is little consensus about what that would look like and at what stage in a pregnancy abortion would be allowed.
Ban assault weapons
The promise: Harris has vowed to ban assault weapons nationwide, calling them “weapons of war” that do not belong “on the streets of a civil society.”
Harris’ position aligns with that of Biden, who helped negotiate the passage of a 10-year federal assault weapons ban when he was a senator. That law, which was signed in 1994 by former President Clinton, lapsed in 2004, and efforts to revive it have failed.
For years, Harris, a former prosecutor, has said gun control opponents have presented a “false choice” between supporting firearms safety laws and repealing the 2nd Amendment.
In addition to assault weapons, Harris says she wants to ban high-capacity magazines and rapid-fire bump stocks. She also supports universal background checks for gun purchases as well as “red-flag laws” that allow courts to temporarily ban people from possessing firearms if they pose a danger to themselves or others.
What Harris has said: “It is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the 2nd Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I am in favor of the 2nd Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban and have universal background checks, safe storage laws and red flag laws,” Harris said in a speech at the White House in September.
The reality: Although mass shootings — at schools, shopping centers, concerts, movie theaters, nightclubs and other places — are an American crisis, passing gun control measures remains exceedingly difficult.
If Republicans control the House or the Senate — or both — after the election, Congress probably would not pass an assault weapons ban.
In 2022, Biden signed the most sweeping gun legislation in decades. The bipartisan bill toughened background checks for the youngest firearms buyers, barred a larger group of domestic violence offenders from having guns, and assisted states in carrying out red flag laws.
But, for decades, congressional Republicans, heavily supported by the gun lobby, have largely thwarted firearms restrictions, including an attempt to revive the assault weapons ban in 2022. And this summer, the Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks — attachments that allow a shooter to fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
On the campaign, trail Harris has said that although she wants to ban assault weapons, she does not want to confiscate all firearms. To prove the point, she has emphasized that both she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — a military veteran and avid hunter — are both gun owners.
In September, she told Oprah Winfrey that “if somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot” before joking that she “probably should not have said that.”
Sign bipartisan border security bill
The promise: Harris has said she would push Congress to bring back the bipartisan border security bill that Senate Republicans killed earlier this year after Trump, who has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, signaled opposition to it. Harris has promised to sign the bill.
The bill would have vastly expanded deportations and detentions, added thousands of Border Patrol agents and other personnel, sped up the asylum process, and expanded the availability of visas and green cards. It did not address the issue of so-called Dreamers brought into the country illegally as children.
The National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents agents, endorsed the bill. The union endorsed Trump this month.
What Harris has said: “That bill would have put more resources to allow us to prosecute transnational criminal organizations for trafficking in guns, drugs and human beings. But you know what happened to that bill? Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said, ‘kill the bill.’ And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said during her debate with Trump on Sept. 10.
The reality: Signing a renewed bipartisan border security bill would, of course, require Congress to pass it. With the partisan control of the House and Senate up for grabs, it is unclear whether that could happen — and whether Trump would still have enough sway, if he lost the election, to again scuttle the legislation.
Border security is one of Harris’ biggest political liabilities.
As vice president, she has worked to to address the root causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — work she took on at Biden’s request. She was never in charge of immigration enforcement or border policy, but Republicans have painted her as a failed “border czar” who is to blame for a record surge in unauthorized migration under Biden.
After Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona last month, the National Border Patrol Council wrote on X that she “has ignored the border problem she created for over three years.”
Trump called Harris’ remarks during her border trip “bull—” While talking about the current administration’s border policies, he called Harris “mentally disabled.”
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