by Natalia Mittelstadt
Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the first COVID-19 stimulus package in 2021 which led to inflation, in what critics call a sign of what’s to come in a possible Harris administration.
Harris, who is the President of the Senate, has cast the most tie-breaking votes in the Senate of any vice president, a total of 33 thus far. Her second tie-breaker was for the stimulus package at the beginning of the Biden administration, which has significantly impacted the economy, as inflation has skyrocketed.
Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the $1.9 trillion stimulus package in February 2021 before it was sent over to the House of Representatives and passed.
Following the passage of the stimulus package, inflation increased significantly.
The U.S. inflation rate was 1.4% in 2020, then jumped to 7% in 2021. President Biden repeatedly said he “inherited” a 9% inflation rate, which CNN called false.
According to a Pew Research Center poll from May, 62% of U.S. adults said that inflation was “a very big problem for the country.”
The poll was conducted May 13-19 of 8,638 U.S. adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
Biden dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday, after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and had been facing calls to drop out from members of his own party following his debate against former President Donald Trump last month. The president eventually endorsed Harris for the Democratic nomination.
At a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday, Harris said, “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
However, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday that Harris “was the deciding vote in the Senate that unleashed this massive inflation on the American people. The Senate was tied 50-50. She voted for the American Rescue Plan in the Senate to break that tie. And then what happened was this massive inflation – which has hurt every working class American, every senior on fixed income – that is squarely on the shoulders of Kamala Harris.”
Stephen Moore, former economic adviser to Trump, told Just the News on Thursday that the “big development” in the presidential race for Harris is that “instead of running away from the Biden agenda, she’s wrapped herself around the Biden economic catastrophe.”
He explained that this is a “good development for Trump” to run against.
“She is not saying she wasn’t for this stuff, she’s for it, embraces it, thinks it’s a big success, thinks the border is a big success. Let the American people decide what they think,” Moore said.
He added that under the Biden administration, average weekly family earnings have dropped by $2,100, whereas they were up by $5,500 under Trump. “We had a pretty booming economy under Trump before COVID,” Moore explained, saying there were lower poverty rates, low unemployment, and factories moving back to the U.S.
Now the economy is improving because the “government is growing” under the Biden administration, whereas Trump wants to grow private business.
Bobby Charles, the national spokesman of Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) and former assistant secretary of state in the last Bush administration, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday that Harris is as much at fault for the economy as Biden.
“In the economy, look, she owns this. She and the president, who she defended with lies for the duration of the last three and a half years, own this entire failure,” Charles said.
“She was in the room – a vice president is always in the room when it came to not only her role prior to this, but her role in the context of being a co-decision maker on virtually all the policy matters,” he added. “I mean, I’ve read accounts, more recently, kind of historical, going backward showing 15 or 20 of the absolute worst decisions this administration made, that she was very much a part of.”
Larry Elder said on a Just the News special report with AMAC that aired on Thursday that the Trump campaign and Republicans can “absolutely” pin inflation on Harris.
“Even you had Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, warning he was going to be inflationary, and they did it, anyway,” Elder said.
The day before the stimulus package was passed, Summers wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post warning of the dangers that the economy could face as a result of its passage.
Summers said that “there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”
He added that “The Biden plan is a vital step forward, but we must make sure that it is enacted in a way that neither threatens future inflation and financial stability nor our ability to build back better through public investment.”
In June, Monmouth University released a poll in which 46% of Americans said they are “currently struggling to remain where they are financially.” That percentage is the highest point recorded by Monmouth University since Biden took office and much higher than during Trump’s term.
“In polls conducted between 2022 and 2023, this number ranged between 37% and 44%,” Monmouth University said in its report. “In prior polls from 2017 to 2021, this sentiment was much lower at 20% to 29%.”
Prices have risen about 20% since the president took office, a significant increase for various goods and services.
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Natalia Mittelstadt is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Vice President Kamala Harris.
