Harris Sidesteps Questions On Why Prices Haven’t Dropped Under Her Watch

In a recent interview with CNN, Vice President Kamala Harris tried to put a positive spin on the Biden administration’s economic record as she continues her campaign for the 2024 presidency.

During the interview, which marked her first sit-down interview since she launched her presidential campaign, Harris was pressed on why, after three-and-a-half years in office, she hasn’t implemented her much-promised plans to lower prices. Her response? The administration had to focus on “recovering the economy first,” and she claimed that they’ve achieved that goal.

Harris: I Haven't Implemented Inflation Fixes I Promise Because 'We Had to Recover', We Did 'Good Work' https://t.co/hyGSWEmGrC

— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) August 30, 2024

The Democratic presidential nominee even boasted of what she described as the “good work” of Bidenomics, lowering inflation below 3% and capping insulin for seniors at $35 a month. But as Harris continued, it became apparent that her focus was on listing past achievements and not addressing the question of why more hasn’t been done to take the financial burden off everyday Americans’ backs.

But CNN host Dana Bash pressed Harris on this very point, asking why these steps haven’t been taken already on her watch. Harris seemed to sidestep the question, pointing instead to what the administration has done in allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices and extending the child tax credit in their first year in office. She also spoke to more than 800,000 new manufacturing jobs created and to improvements in the supply chain.

In her words: “Donald Trump said he was going to do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, never happened. We did it. So, now, and I — as I travel in the state of Georgia and around our country, the number of seniors that have benefited, I’ve met — I was in Nevada recently — a grandmother who showed me her receipts. And before we capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month, she was paying hundreds of dollars, up to thousands of dollars a month for her insulin. She’s not doing that any longer.”

While Harris sought to cast Bidenomics in a positive light, the on-the-ground reality is far different. Many Americans are still pinched by rising costs, and her assertion of the economy’s “recovery” rings hollow as they try to make ends meet.

When Bash asked her if she considered Bidenomics a success, she replied in the affirmative, touting a bunch of initiatives.

As she claimed, “I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000, when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%, when we do what we have done to invest in the American people and bringing manufacturing back to the United States so that we created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, bringing business back to America, what we have done to improve the supply chain so we’re not relying on foreign governments to supply American families with their basic needs, I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.”