CNN’s Kasie Hunt pressed Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams on how her administration would be different from President Biden’s during an interview on Thursday.
“She is breaking with President Biden, but she’s also proposing raising taxes. Why is she doing this now? And how different do you think her proposals are from President Biden’s?” Hunt asked.
Harris unveiled a proposal on Wednesday that seeks to increase the federal government’s capital gains tax rate from 21% to 28%.
Sams quickly brought up Donald Trump, and said the choice between the two candidates was clear, arguing Harris was “talking about creating more small businesses, lowering costs for the middle-class, giving the middle class a tax cut, and those sorts of bread and butter issues for regular people.”
Sams also touted Harris’ plan to tax unrealized gains at a lower rate than what President Biden proposed, as well as quadrupling tax buybacks.
“Should we expect her to go farther in breaking with the president?” Hunt asked again.
“I think she’s her own candidate. She’s the president, vice president, she’s very proud of the record that they have accomplished together and she’s been proud to support and be a key player in so many of the key achievements of this administration. But she’s her own candidate, and she has her own views of these things,” Sams said, adding that Harris believed a 39.6% capital gains tax rate was too high, and that she believed 28% would help the country’s economy.
Hunt pressed further and asked Sams why working class Americans of color and White, working class Americans “have decided that the Democratic Party isn’t for them.”
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“I think the pundits can kind of do the demographic analysis and I think what we do as a campaign and what the vice president does as a candidate is take her message to the voters,” he replied.
Hunt countered again, “Democrats have been in control of the country for the last three, going on four years, and you are still seeing this in the polling when these working class voters are telling us right now that more of them are with Donald Trump than Kamala Harris.”
“Why? What is it about what you guys have been doing for the last 3-plus years that explains that?” she added.
“We‘ve got 60 days until the election. We don‘t have time to sit around and think about why over the last few years certain things may have happened or may not have happened. We‘ve got to go win an election and the vice president is doing that by talking about her economic vision and it‘s really – it‘s really different. It‘s a new way forward, not only for the Democratic Party, but for the country,” Sams argued.
Asked specifically what was really different, Sams cited Harris’ proposal to ban price gouging.
