Vice President Kamala Harris has replaced President Joe Biden atop the presidential ticket, but his “finish the job” campaign mantra can still largely apply to her top policy goals. She’s promising to continue a lot of what Biden was doing during the past four years if she’s elected to four of her own.
Former President Donald Trump, for his part, is itching to get back to the White House and accomplish what he didn’t during his first term.
Since Biden stepped down last month, the vice president has announced few major policy proposals beyond a new push to prevent price gouging by food producers and grocers and plans to cut taxes for families, attempt to bring down homebuying and rental prices and reduce medical debt. Harris also used a recent rally in Las Vegas, where the economy runs on the hospitality industry, to call for ending taxes on tips paid to restaurant, hotel and other service employees. That came more than a month after Trump used his own Las Vegas rally to promise the same on tips.
Despite her lack of specifics on policy, the vice president has committed generally to some major policy positions on various matters, promising to sign sweeping legislation that’s unlikely to clear Congress.
Those include measures codifying the federal right to an abortion, increasing the federal minimum wage, imposing an assault weapons ban, requiring universal background checks for firearm purchases and advancing several long-stalled voting rights measures.
While details are still rather vague, there’s no doubt that whoever prevails in November will seek to shape the landscape of American life in ways wholly distinct from their opponent.
On nearly every issue, the choices — if the winner gets his or her way — are sharply defined.
The onward march of regulation and incentives to restrain climate change, or a slow walk if not an about-face. Higher taxes on the super rich, or cuts to benefit high-wage earners. Abortion rights reaffirmed, or left to states to restrict or allow as each decides. Another attempt to legislate border security and orderly entry into the country, or massive deportations. A commitment to stand with Ukraine or let go.
HARRIS: The vice president has called on Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing in federal law abortion access, a right that stood for nearly 50 years before being overturned by the Supreme Court. Like Biden, Harris has criticized bans on abortion in Republican-controlled states and promised as president to block any potential nationwide ban should one clear a future GOP-run Congress. Harris was the Democrats’ most visible champion of abortion rights even while Biden was still in the race. She has promoted the administration’s efforts short of federal law — including steps to protect women who travel to obtain abortions and limit how law enforcement collects medical records.
TRUMP: The former president often brags about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion. After dodging questions about when in pregnancy he believes the procedure should be restricted, Trump announced last spring that decisions on access and cutoffs should be left to the states. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban into law. But he’s declined to say whether he would try to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone. He told Time magazine that it should also be left up to states to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.
