CHICAGO – Kamala Harris is taking it easy opening politics agenda for next year if he wins the presidency. The ensuing debate highlights an important dynamic: Many of their biggest ambitions will need Democrats to take control of both houses of Congress to have a fighting chance.
There is little on Harris’ agenda that can be accomplished by executive action — and any attempts are likely to be blocked in court. Republicans already say that if Harris controls the House or Senate under a presidency, his first plans will be dead on arrival.
“What we really need to do is win the trifecta,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said at a fundraiser with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. “Because it will be a very different Harris presidency if President Harris has to deal with MAGA lunatics in the House or troublemakers in the Senate. We have to win in three.”
It’s a tall order: Democrats hold a 51-seat Senate majority, but the party is poised to lose seats in West Virginia, and Democratic senators are locked in tough re-election campaigns in two other Trump-friendly states, Montana and Ohio. . In the House of Representatives, Democrats need to gain four seats to take control.
Still, there’s only so much Harris can do with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, even narrow ones, because under Senate rules, policies related to spending and taxes can bypass the 60-vote filibuster rule.
They could include Harris’ plan to provide a $3,600 per child tax credit for middle-class parents, expand Affordable Care Act subsidies and extend the Earned Income Tax Credit to $1,500 for “frontline” workers. That filibuster-proof process could also be used to approve a proposal to fund billions of dollars in subsidies to local governments to build more housing and offer $25,000 to first-time homeowners.
And the same 50-vote process could be used to raise tax revenue to fund those plans, including his challenge raising the corporate tax rate 21% to 28%.
But securing full control of Congress to vote on the plan will be difficult, even if Democrats have a strong year.
“Forty-nine to 50 is the difference between a historic legislative agenda and a total block,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible. “Abortion rights cannot be codified. It is impossible to pass the democratic reform. And any economic legislation would be vulnerable to a GOP veto. We need 50 votes.”
In order to win votes in Congress, Harris’ plans must change. But the Democratic-led Congress will invest in his success and listen to his ideas.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, blasted Harris’ new proposals as “massive, big-government socialist policies” and compared them to laws from “Soviet Russia and Venezuela.”
“The Harris plan is the opposite of what our country needs and should be rejected outright,” Johnson said.
Even if he loses the election, former President Donald Trump, who may retain his influence in the GOP, is fiercely critical of his views.
“Comrade Kamala is going full communist,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt said in a text message.
Other Harris proposals, which are regulatory, would be subject to the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
They include his plan to “cut red tape and red tape” to streamline the process of building homes. They also include bills Harris has endorsed to stop “predatory investments” by corporate homebuyers. They include his call to give the Federal Trade Commission and state prosecutors new powers to crack down on price gouging by food and grocery companies.
If Democrats get 50 votes, they will have a way to break the filibuster for at least some of their ambitions, such as codifying abortion rights and expanding voting rights. Incumbent President Joe Biden has approved extraordinary exemptions for these two measures, but not others.
Harris’ current position on the filibuster is unclear. During his failed 2020 presidential campaign, he called for its repeal to adopt aggressive new policies. But he kept silent about it in this race. His campaign did not comment when asked if he favored breaking the 60-vote filibuster and, if so, what policies he favored.
The gulf between the two parties underscores the importance of the fight for Congress. Since 1992, every president has taken office with his party controlling both the House and Senate.
The expiration of parts of Trump’s 2017 tax law by the end of 2025 could provide an opening for bipartisan talks on new tax policy, even with a divided government. But it looks very different from Harris pushing his proposals with party control.
Still, some Democrats aren’t giving up hope that Harris can advance parts of his agenda without the full triumvirate.
“Really big things require at least a Democratic majority in one house of Congress to negotiate with the other,” said Mondaire Jones, who is challenging Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., in a competitive suburban district. “I think we will have both chambers. …The energy we’ve seen over the last four weeks is a testament to how we’re going to defy expectations.”
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said before Biden left his party that his party faced a “potential landslide” Republican victory.
But now he predicts Democrats will “surprise people” and win the trifecta. If they do, he said, “we’ll be able to do some really important things, like pass a child tax credit bill that would cut childhood poverty in half.”