Former President Donald Trump is promising a series of working-class tax cuts as Vice President Kamala Harris claims he is only out to serve billionaires like himself.
Trump has attempted to infuse his tax policy with the same populist message he’s carried into his third run for president. On Thursday, he rolled out a plan to end taxes on overtime pay. Before that, he proposed that service workers’ tip wages also be tax-exempt.
“The people who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens in our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them,” Trump said in announcing the overtime proposal in Tucson, Arizona.
Yet the steps also coincide with Harris’s warnings that Trump wants to enrich his “billionaire buddies” at the expense of the middle class, citing the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017 as president.
The law, which expires next year, benefited four-fifths of taxpayers and temporarily expanded the child tax credit, but its provisions that helped the wealthy, including a lower corporate tax rate, have for years been fodder for Democrats.
“Donald Trump has no plan for you,” Harris said at Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia. “It’s all about tax breaks for the richest people.”
Some of Trump’s promises predate Harris’s candidacy. He announced his “no tax on tips” plan in June, weeks before she took over the Democratic ticket from President Joe Biden.
But Trump has increasingly used tax and other one-off proposals as a headline-grabbing way to insulate himself from Democratic attacks.
His plan to end taxes on Social Security benefits, announced in July, is popular with seniors, a key voting bloc. Eighty-three percent strongly or somewhat favor the policy change, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.
But the proposal also runs counter to the idea that Trump wants to “gut” the program, as Harris frequently claims.
Outside of tax policy, Trump promised the government would cover the cost of IVF, an expensive fertility treatment, in August to rebut Harris’s claims he wants to make reproductive care more difficult to access. The proposal has divided Republicans, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggesting a mandate on coverage is a slippery slope.
Harris would still rather be in Trump’s shoes on the economy. She served as vice president during the worst inflation crisis in 40 years and faces deep skepticism from voters concerned about the higher cost of living.
When asked who is better able to handle the economy, polls tend to give Trump an advantage over Harris.
Yet Harris has not shied away from the issue. She has embraced Biden’s policies to varying degrees, including his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning more than $400,000 a year, but has simultaneously attempted to separate herself from his administration with proposed giveaways of her own, including $25,000 in financial assistance for first-time home buyers.
Meanwhile, she has promised to raise the capital gains tax, but at a lower rate than Biden.
Trump is determined to use her record under Biden to stoke working-class discontent. Citing the crisis at the southern border, he accuses her of giving away millions of jobs to illegal immigrants.
But Harris is seeking to exploit that Trump, too, is defending his record in the White House and hopes to muddy his perceived working-class appeal using his own policies as president.
In response to Trump’s overtime proposal, the Harris campaign noted that Trump scaled back an Obama-era rule that expanded overtime pay to 4 million workers.
The Biden administration once again expanded those protections after Trump left office.
“He is desperate and scrambling and saying whatever it takes to try to trick people into voting for him,” Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “There’s only one candidate in this race who will actually fight for workers: Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Republicans brush aside the criticism as hollow. The Harris campaign, like that of Trump, is bankrolled in part by billionaires, while the endorsements she’s received from Hollywood have provided the GOP an opening to paint her as an elite.
“Oh, you mean the person who’s endorsed by Taylor Swift and Oprah is mad that Trump is for the billionaire class?” said Republican strategist Scott Jennings.
“You know, spare me. I just can’t take any of that seriously,” he added.
Still, Harris believes she can reset the narrative on the economy by framing Trump as out of touch with the concerns of working-class voters.
She has repeatedly invoked the millions Trump received on a “silver platter” from his real estate developer father while highlighting her own middle-class upbringing.
Harris often mentions being raised in a single-parent household to convince voters she is cut from the same cloth as them.
“What Harris is trying to do is establish her character,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “It’s more about Harris defining herself to the voters who don’t know very much about her than it is defining Trump.”
The jockeying over the economy comes at a critical juncture in the race. Harris has erased the polling advantage Trump enjoyed against Biden, but a series of polls taken after their Philadelphia debate suggest she may be pulling ahead.
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Some of Trump’s tax plans could help erode the traditionally Democratic voting blocs Harris needs to win. On Friday, Trump predicted he had the support of the United Auto Workers despite the union’s president coming out strongly against him.
Yet Harris is attempting to keep Trump from staking out much new ground. She got under his skin in August when she adopted his “no tax on tips” proposal, seen as important to attracting service workers in swing state Nevada.
