Tipsheet

Harris Campaign Finally Announces a Policy Proposal

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  August 15, 2024 11:45 AM

On Wednesday night, the Harris campaign announced Vice President Kamala Harris will outline her first policy proposal: price controls. She has been noticeably quiet on her policy proposals more than three weeks after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her.

Such a proposal, described by the campaign as "the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries," is expected to come when Harris gives a speech on Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Those who are friendly to the idea are all too happy to use the campaign's phrasing when it comes to "a ban on corporate food price gouging," which has become a trending topic over X. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has already gleefully pointed out that she has a bill to do just that as she claims, "[C]orporate monopolies are jacking up prices to pad their profits."

This appears to be Harris' plan to fix inflation, which the Biden-Harris administration has come under fire for with how much prices have surged. Warren's post sure enough used the price controls proposal to claim Harris "is fighting back to deliver relief for families at the grocery store."

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The American people don't give the Biden-Harris administration very high marks on handling inflation or the economy. 

Biden, during a Wednesday event at the White House for "creators," answered in the affirmative when a reporter asked him if "the U.S. beat inflation?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Biden insisted. "I told you they’re going to have a soft landing--we’re going to have a soft landing. My policies are working. Start writing that way. Okay?"

For all of the fearmongering that the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party as a whole have engaged in, it's not an exaggeration to warn that the price controls are akin to communism:

Bonchie, writing for our sister site of RedState, highlighted some real-world examples when talking about how Harris "just microwaved some communism and proposed price controls":

For normal Americans, though, these policies have consequences, and price controls would be an economic disaster. One only needs to look at the history of the Soviet Union to understand that, or if you'd like a modern day analogue, Venezuela. When government is used to cap the prices, from groceries to rent, it inevitabily leads to stagnation or even regression in the market. 

Whatever lower prices exist in the short-term are nothing compared to scarcity that is caused in the long-term. Who cares if bread is "cheaper" if there's none available because production is quashed with price controls? And who cares if rent is "lower" if you end up with a massive shortage because no one will invest in new housing?

And, as a CNN post shared by the Trump War Room on Thursday morning reminds us, "Think corporate greed is the leading cause of inflation? Think again." 

"Economists at the SF Fed found that corporate price gouging was not a primary catalyst for the inflation surge of 2021 to 2022," a piece from May mentions. 

Another post from the Trump War Room account, which was a quoted repost by RealClearPolitics' Philip Melanchthon Wegmann sharing the announcement, warned how such a policy is "a government takeover of food" and that a "vote for Kamala is a vote for bread lines in America."