Kamala Harris’s crucial involvement in enacting the law that sparked the greatest price hikes in four decades would make it difficult for her to escape blame for the inflation spike that turned the public against President Biden, despite the hopes of Democratic strategists.
In March 2021, the heavily split Senate finally approved the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of the Biden-Harris administration after Harris gave the deciding vote in support of the pandemic spending package, which even leading Democrats had warned would overheat the economy.
Republicans opposed the bill with a unanimous vote, arguing that it was potentially inflationary, unneeded, and expensive. Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard, two well-known economists closely linked to liberal politics and the Democratic Party, have issued dire warnings about the substantial inflation the American Rescue Plan may bring about. Summers referred to it as the “least responsible” economic strategy in forty years, claiming that it would drive demand above the economy’s capacity and result in persistent inflation. Blanchard also voiced worries that the amount of expenditure will lead to severe inflationary pressures, which might eventually undermine economic stability.
Those cautions turned out to be wise. Long-dormant inflation emerged across the U.S. economy shortly after Harris cast her vote in favor of the Senate passing one of the greatest increases in deficit spending in a generation, pushing inflation to levels not seen in decades. The following summer, there was a nine percent inflation peak—the highest rate of price rise since 1981.
The Biden-Harris administration introduced the inflationary package, which became law shortly after the House approved it. Despite the economy’s rapid expansion and workers’ return to work due to the removal of lockdowns, the Biden-Harris administration sought to tarnish the reputation of former President Trump’s pandemic relief initiatives.
Even though the law wasn’t economically necessary, Biden and Harris believed that it had to pass politically. In the inaugural Democratic presidential debate of 2019, California Senator Harris took a hard stance against the Trump administration’s economic policies. The lowest unemployment in decades, low interest rates, low inflation, and the strongest pay growth in a generation refute her assertions that Trump’s economy is “not working for working people.”
During the campaign trail, Biden and Harris both repeatedly asserted—without providing any supporting data—that Trump’s perceived insufficient response to the epidemic had negatively impacted the economy. Indeed, following a weeks-long but very severe downturn in the spring, the economy expanded at its quickest rate in decades in the second half of 2020.
The Biden-Harris spending measure significantly increased government spending on the economy by providing $1,400 “stimmie” checks to hundreds of millions of Americans and a hefty $300 weekly unemployment help to endure through the summer for unemployed people. Under the guise of pandemic assistance, it gave money to states, small enterprises, municipal governments, and schools. When the supply side of the economy was still struggling, those funds spurred a surge in demand, which in turn caused the burst of inflation that engulfed the U.S. economy.
Republicans had contended that Congress had already passed five large spending bills, usually with bipartisan backing, and that the economy did not require something quite as large as the Biden-Harris plan. They proposed significant modifications to the proposal, such as reducing its overall amount to a still generous but more manageable $650 billion and tying funding to things like states lifting lockdown laws and schools reopening.
During the 2020 election, the Democrats violated their pledges to voters to work together and create a united nation by approving the Biden-Harris pandemic spending plan without the assistance of Republicans and only with Harris’ tie-breaking vote in the Senate. A few weeks prior, Biden had made a plea for unity the main focus of his inauguration speech.
Harris and Biden seemed to enjoy their current political positions of authority. “Democratic leadership showed little interest in creating a tailored, bipartisan assistance plan that fits the difficulties at hand,” said Senator Susan Collins at the time. As a result, when the economic effects of inflation became politically costly, the Biden-Harris administration and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill seemed to desire a purported “relief” package that they alone could take credit for.
Harris’s political, tie-breaking vote in support of the inflationary measure was not the first, and it most definitely wasn’t the last. Six weeks prior, Harris had cast her first tie-breaking vote to approve the pandemic funding plan’s outline as well as the procedural steps necessary to enable the Senate to pass the package without Republican support and prevent a filibuster.
“There are 50 yes’s and 50 no’s on this vote,” Harris stated. “The vice president votes in favor of the concurrent resolution as amended, and the Senate, which is evenly split, adopts it.”
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