Proposals to reduce housing, child care and health care costs for millions of families are “a welcome step in the right direction,” one supporter said.

After US Vice President Kamala Harris announced earlier this week that she would crack down on price gouging with the first federal ban on food and grocery prices, the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign team revealed details of Harris’s broader economic program on Friday. Supporters made it clear that she is concerned with reducing many costs for working households.

In addition to a four-year plan to boost housing construction, provide financial assistance to first-time buyers and curb predatory large landlords, Harris announced plans to reduce medical costs and provide financial assistance to young parents and families with young children.

The proposals, which Harris is expected to formally announce at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, send the message that “the days of saying, ‘What’s good for the free market is good for America,’ are over,” said Felicia Wong, president of the progressive think tank Roosevelt Forward.The Washington Post.

“Harris has made a number of policy decisions in recent weeks that make clear that the Democratic Party is committed to a pro-work and pro-family agenda,” Wong said.

As part of Harris’ plan to reduce health care costs, the vice president will introduce proposals to raise the Medicare prescription drug cap to $2,000 per year for all Americans and to set a $35 per month cap on insulin. Both measures are provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and currently apply only to Medicare recipients. postAs reported, the possibility of granting price caps to all Americans “could face resistance from the pharmaceutical industry and Republicans” who oppose blocking price negotiations on Medicare drugs, which are also included in the IRA.

Harris said she would work to speed up these negotiations. In the first round, the Biden administration had already announced lower prices for ten widely used drugs.

The vice president will also work closely with states to cancel the medical debt of millions of people “and help them avoid accumulating as much debt in the future, because no one should go bankrupt just because they were unlucky enough to get sick or injured,” the Harris campaign said. “This plan builds on Vice President Harris’ leadership in removing medical debt from the credit reports of nearly every American and helping to secure funds from the American Rescue Plan to forgive $7 billion in medical debt for up to 3 million Americans.”

The final point of the economic plan announced on Friday is aimed at “tax cuts for the middle class,” the campaign said. The vice president promised to reinstate and expand the child tax credit. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has focused on this issue in recent weeks, as vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) has come under fire for his criticism of people without children and his absence from a Senate vote on expanding the existing child tax credit, which almost the entire Republican Senate caucus voted against.

The Harris team said the vice president would restore the expanded child tax credit, which gave middle- and low-income families a credit of up to $3,600 per child. The program was passed in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan but expired at the end of that year due to opposition from the Republican Party and conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (IW.Va.), then a Democrat.

Harris also wants to push for another “historic expansion of the child tax credit: a tax break of up to $6,000 for middle- and low-income families during their child’s first year, when a family’s expenses are at their highest – for cribs, diapers, car seats and more – and many parents are still forced to forgo income by taking time off from work.”

Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said the proposal would also work hand in hand with Harris’ housing plan to “positively impact families’ ability to pay their rent.”

Vance had earlier this week called for raising the child tax credit, currently $2,000 a year, to $5,000. But Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), who last month proposed a package that would have raised the cap on the tax credit for low-income families, said Vance’s refusal to vote on the bill exposed him as a “phony.”

“If JD Vance cared deeply about America’s working families, he would have shown up on the Senate floor a week and a half ago and voted for my proposal to increase the child tax credit and help 16 million low-income children get ahead,” Wyden said. “He hasn’t even cared enough to use his platform to call on his Republican Senate colleagues to support this proposal.”

Maurice Mitchell, chairman of the Working Families Party, said that with their plans to extend tax cuts that primarily benefit corporations and the wealthy, “Trump and Vance would look out for the bosses and billionaires, while Harris and (Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim) Walz would show working people that they stand behind them.”

“Policies that support families will always be popular with voters. Working people want our federal government to take action on exorbitant costs,” Mitchell said. “With her commitment to fight greedflation, lower prescription drug costs and make housing more affordable, Kamala Harris is listening to the voters she needs to get out to the polls in November.”

A Data for Progress poll late last month found that 75 percent of Americans support dramatically cutting prescription drug prices, 79 percent support making corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and 58 percent support reinstating the expanded child tax credit.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, called Harris’ economic program “a welcome step in the right direction, especially with its focus on combating corporate price gouging, reining in predatory landlords, lowering prescription drug prices, and providing real relief to working families burdened with medical debt.”

“But to truly address the root causes of economic inequality, we must advance comprehensive reforms that address the structural problems that allow corporations to exploit consumers and workers,” Geevarghese said. “The proposals in the Harris-Walz plan are important first steps, but the progressive movement will be paying close attention to ensure that these policies are not only implemented, but consistently enforced to deliver the meaningful change that Americans desperately need.”

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