It would have been so embarrassing if former President Donald Trump called out Vice President Kamala Harris during the debate for having no agenda on her website.
The vapid vice president has been widely criticized for running an elusive campaign devoid of any specific agenda since July when she slipped into the last leg of the race for which she was not a primary candidate. But she could not skate on the “thank God Joe’s not running” enthusiasm forever.
It probably was not a coincidence that Harris released her agenda for the first time mere days before the big debate with Trump. It prevented Trump from saying she had no agenda on her website. Instead, he had a chance to search through the lengthy paragraphs and try to find the few specifics she offers amid all the fluff.
In places where Harris’ platform does include any specifics, she seems to have copied her agenda from others, like a cheating student looking at his neighbor’s test paper.
For example, her previous agendas never mentioned “eliminat[ing] taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” but after Trump announced this summer he would end taxes on tips, now it appears in her platform.
On Monday, The New Republic released a report detailing how the launch of Harris’ platform agenda page likely reveals an “embarrassing copy-paste” job, as the headline indicates.
“Shortly after Kamala Harris released her policy agenda on Sunday evening, users on X spotted something in the metadata: Much of the language appears to have been lifted from Joe Biden’s campaign website,” the report reads, noting how one user “pointed out” how “language urging voters to reelect Joe Biden” was “visible when links to the campaign site were shared, and in the website’s description on Google searches.”
“All of this creates the impression that at least some of the Harris campaign’s policy language was copied and pasted from Biden’s documents,” the report continues.
Like Biden, Harris’ agenda is strongly anti-business, with several promises to keep businesses from charging more than her administration says they should with socialist price control measures. In addition to controlling pharmaceutical costs, Harris aims to “outlaw new forms of price fixing by corporate landlords” to control what they can charge for housing rent. And she will call for the “first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries,” which puts the government, not the marketplace, in charge of costs — just like Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro did. His policies have not gone well for Venezuelans who have previously turned to killing zoo animals and pets and digging through dumped garbage out of desperation for food.
Under the Harris plan, the spending also shifts to warp speed, with promises of up to $25,000 for first-time homebuyers for a down payment. The Harris ticket also pledges to expand the Child Tax Credit to give a “$6,000 tax cut to families with newborn children.”
Harris promises to ensure “families can afford high-quality child care,” her agenda says, but does not describe how that will work. It certainly will involve government spending.
As noted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in a hearing earlier this year, it is not “greedy businesses,” but government regulations and “out-of-control” government spending that are to blame for inflation.
Comparing Agendas
But how does her current agenda stack up against the ghost of Kamala Past?
Harris issued agendas when she ran for U.S. Senate in 2016, and in her brief, failed campaign for president in 2020. The specifics in her previous platforms show what a radical she has always been. But now, in her agenda as in the debate, Harris is running a “vibes” campaign that focuses more on her personality than on her (very radical) policies.
Second Amendment
During the debate, Harris said she won’t take anyone’s gun. That is not what her past agendas indicate.
In 2016, the Harris for Senate agenda called for an “assault weapons” ban, and she planned to “support efforts” prohibiting “people on a no-fly list from being allowed to purchase semi-automatic weapons.”
In her platform for her very brief presidential run in 2020, Harris promised that, if “Congress fail[ed] to send comprehensive gun safety legislation to Kamala’s desk within her first 100 days as president … she [would] take executive action,” including “mandat[ing] the most comprehensive federal background checks in history, revoke[ing] the licenses of gun manufacturers that break the law,” and “ban[ning] the importation of AR-15 style assault weapons.”
Her 2024 “New way forward” platform agenda does not, in fact, offer anything “new,” as she only continues to promise a ban on “assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” According to the platform, she would require universal background checks and support red flag laws in which government officials effectively decide if someone is too dangerous to have a gun, but these vague claims are buried under two paragraphs worth of resume which, in part, touts her previous efforts to undermine the Second Amendment.
Environment
In 2016, Harris’ platform praised her challenges against “Big Oil,” and stated how she “believe[d] in fighting climate change by investing in clean energy, improved energy efficiency of our homes and buildings, smart grid upgrades, and public transportation,” claiming that “Combating Climate Change Is Good For Our Economy.”
In 2020, she said she would “take on big oil companies.” She supported the Green New Deal and claimed “tackl[ing] the climate crisis” and “build[ing] a clean economy” through such a deal meant “accelerating the spread of electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines” and “making bold investments in innovative technologies to build a carbon free future.”
In 2024, Harris offers no actionable plan. She reflects back to past work, taking credit for winning “tens of millions in settlements against Big Oil” and holding “polluters accountable.”
The Harris platform goes on to say the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” is “lowering household energy costs,” but the truth is, consumers have seen costs rise sharply. Her current agenda cryptically promises to “unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she … advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs,” and, like most humans, supports the “freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water.”
Education
In 2016, Harris called for public education to be “more equitable.” “Success in school shouldn’t be decided by where students live, the color of their skin, their immigration status, or their parents’ income,” her agenda said. She promoted the elimination of tuition at community colleges to make the first two years toward a bachelor’s degree free. Her plan also proposed “refinancing options” for students and parents trying to pay off hefty college loans.
In 2020, she promised to “provide relief from crushing debt today, and ensure tomorrow’s students can attend college debt-free.” And she promised a $13,500 raise for public school teachers.
Her 2024 agenda once again does not provide such specifics. It only describes what the Biden/Harris administration has done in the past while she promises to “continue working to end the unreasonable burden of student loan debt and fight to make higher education more affordable.”
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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