Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) pledged on Wednesday that, if elected, a Biden administration would revoke President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts “on day one.”
The California lawmaker made the pledge at the first and only vice presidential debate of the general election when asked if the Biden campaign’s pledge to raise taxes would hamper the economic recovery once the novel coronavirus pandemic has receded.
“On the issue of the economy, I think there couldn’t be a more fundamental difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” Haris said. “Joe Biden believes you measure the health and the strength of America’s economy, based on the health and the strength of the American worker and the American family.”
Arguing that Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts had only benefited the “top one percent and the biggest corporations of America,” Harris said the former vice president and herself were committed to their repeal.
“On day one, Joe Biden will repeal that tax bill, he’ll get rid of it,” Harris said, “and what he’ll do with the money, he’ll invest it in the American people.”
Since announcing joining the Democrat ticket, Harris has repeatedly attempted to paint Trump’s tax cuts as only benefiting the super-wealthy. That claim, however, has largely been debunked, with the Washington Post reporting in May 2019 that the average family making between $50,000 and $75,000 annually got a tax cut of almost $1,000.
If Biden and Harris were to win the election and succeeded in pushing through a repeal of the 2017 bill, taxes would likely increase across the board, especially on working-class Americans. As the conservative-leaning Americans for Tax reform has noted, a single parent taking care of one child on an annual income of $41,000 received a tax cut of more than $1,300 because of Trump’s tax package.