Harris unveils new plans to lower housing, food, and childcare costs for Michiganders

A series of new plans from Vice President Kamala Harris spells out how she would spend the first 100 days of her presidency focused on lowering costs for working families. 

MICHIGAN—Vice President Kamala Harris is promoting a broad set of economic proposals that would lower the cost of living for Americans and offer new tax breaks as she aims to address financial concerns that are top of the mind for voters ahead of this year’s presidential election.

On Friday, Harris announced several proposals for the first 100 days of the Harris-Walz administration—all of them aimed at bringing down costs for American families, including by cutting taxes for the middle class, reducing grocery and prescription drug costs, lowering the cost of owning and renting a home, and relieving medical debt for millions of Americans.

In a statement, Harris said her latest plan will “address some of the sharpest pain points American families are confronting and bolster their financial security.” And in Michigan, the new presidential agenda could provide some significant financial relief for working families.

Here’s an overview:

Down Payment Assistance

Harris’ agenda includes a plan to provide $25,000 in down payment assistance to more than 1 million first-time homeowners—with “more generous” support for first-generation homeowners.

According to the plan, the federal assistance would be available to all first-time home buyers, with caveats—including a requirement that recipients have “paid their rent on time for two years.” It also aims to “expand the reach” of existing down-payment assistance programs, lowering homeownership costs for more than 4 million families over a four-year period. 

Details on the new proposal are still sparse, but the plan bears a striking similarity to a new federal housing assistance program that launched in Detroit this summer to help up to 300 Michiganders secure as much as $25,000 in down payment assistance for a home mortgage. 

Lowering the Rent

Harris’ 100-day agenda also includes a plan to keep expanding rental assistance for veterans, boosting housing supply for those without homes, enforcing fair housing laws, and making sure that corporate landlords can’t use taxpayer dollars to “unfairly rip off” their tenants.

It also calls on Congress to help ensure rental costs stay affordable.

That includes asking lawmakers to pass the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which would remove key tax benefits that investors have used to buy up large numbers of single-family rental homes across the country and then mark them up—in bulk— to the Americans who rent them.

As part of her latest plan, Harris also wants Congress to pass the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, which is designed to prevent corporate landlords from using private equity-backed price-setting tools to collude with each other to jack up rent prices. 

Building More Affordable Housing

Part of Harris’ newly released agenda revolves around “an urgent and comprehensive four-year plan to lower housing costs for working families and end America’s housing shortage.” 

That includes a new goal of building 3 million new housing units nationwide over the next four years—increasing the nation’s housing supply and making rents and mortgages cheaper.

The plan also includes expanding an existing tax incentive for businesses that build affordable housing, as well as rolling out new tax credits for contractors who build starter homes that are sold to first-time homebuyers, which would incentivize builders to take on more projects that would “otherwise be too costly or difficult to develop or rehabilitate,” according to the plan.

Additionally, Harris plans to ask Congress to set aside a new, $40 billion “innovation fund” that would be designed to help local governments fund their own local solutions to build more housing—just as long as they “show they will deliver results,” according to Harris’ 100-day plan.

The new agenda also includes a plan to make certain federal lands eligible to be repurposed for new affordable housing developments, as well as “streamline” the permitting process to make it easier—and cheaper—for developers to take on new housing projects across the country.

Banning Price Gouging on Groceries

The Harris-Walz administration also has plans to advance the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries”—which includes setting “clear rules of the road” that would make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits. 

Under the plan, Harris also wants the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general—like Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel—to be granted the authority to investigate and impose “strict new penalties” on companies that break those new federal rules.

“Price fluctuations are normal in free markets, but Vice President Harris recognizes there is a big difference between fair pricing and the excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business that Americans have seen in the food and grocery industry,” the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement released on Friday morning, which detailed its 100-day presidential plan.

Additionally, Harris also plans to direct her administration to “crack down” on “unfair mergers and acquisitions” that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices.

In a statement, the campaign said the plan will also support small businesses—like grocery stores, meat processors, and farms—to help make those industries “become more competitive.”

Grocery prices remain a top concern for voters. Even though the rate of increase leveled off this year, grocery prices have jumped 26% since 2019, according to reports in the Washington Post.

Tax Breaks for Working Families

Harris’ latest plan also includes a proposal to expand the federal Child Tax Credit to provide a $6,000 tax credit to families during the first year of their child’s life, $3,600 per child ages 1 to 5, and $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17.

The benefit for newborns is reportedly aimed at the high costs families face directly after childbirth, which average out to be about $3,000 more than those without newborn babies.

In Michigan, about 700,000 families receive the state’s Working Families Tax Credit. The new, 100-day agenda also details a proposal to expand the federal Earned Income Tax Credit to provide up to $1,500 for childless individuals and couples who work low-income jobs.

As a hard rule, nobody earning less than $400,000 a year would pay more taxes under the plan.

The cost of the proposals could reportedly cost at least $100 billion over a decade, as well as require Congressional approval, which could become complicated by Republican opposition. 

Lowering Health Care Costs

With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-Harris administration successfully capped the price of insulin at $35 a month for seniors, as well as capped seniors’ out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 starting next year. As president, Harris’ 100-day agenda includes a proposal to put those cost-saving caps in place for every American—not just seniors. 

Harris’ agenda also includes plans to accelerate the speed at which Medicare negotiates with pharmaceutical companies to help lower the cost of prescription drugs—with the aim of cutting the cost of some of the most expensive and common drugs by up to 80% starting in 2026.

“She will increase competition and demand transparency in the health care industry, starting by cracking down on pharmaceutical companies who block competition and abusive practices by pharmaceutical middlemen who squeeze small pharmacies’ profits and raise costs for consumers,” the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement detailing the 100-day agenda.

Harris also detailed plans to work with individual states to remove medical debt from “nearly all Americans’ credit reports,” as well as using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to effectively cancel up to $7 billion in outstanding medical debt for up to 3 million Americans.

The effort could reportedly involve using federal funds to buy and forgive outstanding medical debt from health providers—similar to a model that has already been deployed in Michigan.

What else is in the new Harris-Walz plan?

According to the campaign, the proposals released this week are just one part of the Harris-Walz administration’s economic agenda—which also includes, but is not limited to:

• protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare;
• bringing together labor, small businesses, and major corporations to invest in America, create jobs, and deliver for Americans;
• lowering costs of education, child care, and long-term care; 
• empowering workers and their right to come together to bargain for higher wages; creating a stable business environment with consistent and transparent rules;
• and encouraging innovative technologies while protecting consumers.

READ MORE: 10 things Michiganders should know about Project 2025

For the latest Michigan news, follow The ‘Gander on Twitter.

Follow Political Correspondent Kyle Kaminski here.