Mercifully, the vapid RNC and DNC conventions are over. But the long slog toward Election Day lays ahead. GOP nominee Donald Trump’s views are a matter of record. Trump served four years in the White House and has remained in the spotlight since his 2020 defeat. Journalists, however, have written thousands of words about Democrat Kamala Harris’ unwillingness to give one-on-one interviews and her refusal to participate in what she saw as a potentially confrontational Fox News debate. Finally, Harris, using Vice Presential nominee Tim Walz as her crutch, has consented to a CNN interview with Dana Bash.
But voters hoping to gain insight into Harris’ policies should not put stock in what Harris says to Bash. Dating back to her years as San Francisco’s District attorney then as California’s Attorney General U.S, Senator, and Vice President Harris, over a 20-year period that began in 2004 through 2024, has repeatedly shown her hand. No contrived televised event is necessary to know that she opposes fracking, supports universal health care for illegal aliens, favors packing the Supreme Court, approves of a federal job guarantee that could cost taxpayers up to $2 trillion per year. A federal jobs guarantee, part of the Green New Deal, means that the government would provide a job to anyone who wants one, similar to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. Harris now wants to spend millions to construct a Southwest border wall, a project she once called “un-American.” Moreover, Harris is pro-criminal. Harris wrote Proposition 47 that set off a crime wave across California which in 2022 cost retailers $18.2 billion in lost revenues and simultaneously denied the $78-billion-in-debt state $1.3 billion in tax receipts. The proposition downgraded shoplifting felony thefts to misdemeanors when the stolen property had a value of less than $950. When Prop 47 passed, law enforcement authorities blamed Harris for hiding that the legislation would massively reduce DNA collection to help solve crimes like rape and murder. After the proposition became law, the amount of DNA samples collected per month dropped from 15,000 to 5,000. Douglas Eckenrod, a former California prison system deputy parole director, told NBC News “Kamala Harris is not a hardliner [on crime].” Prop 47 emptied prisons and sent middle-class and upper-class households fleeing to states whose officials respect the law.
Harris’ remarkable 180-degree turn is unprecedented in presidential politics. If she has evolved, Harris owes the public a detailed explanation. But one pledge that she has not backed away from is amnesty for a minimum of fifteen million illegal aliens and possibly many millions more. In her Chicago acceptance speech, Harris said, “”I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.” These words are amnesty codes which raise the obvious question that asks why, as Vice President and border czar, she did not move to “secure our border.” Illegal immigration is a crime, yet the self-described “tough prosecutor” was missing in action for nearly four years. Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor and Harris’ running mate is on board with a broad amnesty, too. Walz wrote to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August 2021, pushing for a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants as part of a potential federal budget reconciliation bill, that would include Temporary Protected Status holders and DREAMers.
Apparently, neither Harris who dismantled border security, pledged to close detention centers and to end deportations, nor Walz have done the math on what amnesty, or a “path to citizenship” as Harris calls it, would cost taxpayers. Once illegal immigrants achieve legal status, they eventually qualify for Medicare. As the recent long-term projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show, the national debt is on an unsustainable path, $35 trillion and rising hourly. One of the largest drivers of soaring debt is federal spending on major healthcare programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. If current trends continue, the nation’s debt trajectory will rise from nearly 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024 to 166 percent in 2054. Combined with the demographic realities of an aging population, America’s healthcare system leaves the nation with a treacherous fiscal future. Not only will more Americans qualify for federal healthcare in the coming years, but older people, on average, need more healthcare. Consequently, without reform, the federal budget will bear the cost of rapidly growing healthcare bills. Adding more amnestied Medicare and Medicaid recipients to the roll is fiscal folly and flies in the face of a president’s responsibility to protect the nation’s welfare.
Harris’ deliberately vague acceptance speech which she delivered to a glam audience gave no hint that she is serious about reversing her agenda to shift toward the middle. She never mentioned the border or inflation but instead, without providing details, touted clean air, an end to gun violence, and abortion rights. Whether Harris can convince the voting public with her silence is a golden strategy is unclear. Harris has a powerful coalition of committed Democrats, women anxious to help her break the glass ceiling, and enthusiastic diversity voters that may be difficult for Trump to overcome.
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