Then-Senator Kamala Harris was one of the Senate’s most liberal voting records and was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, but her chances of winning were slim.
But now, less than five years later, as the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris is softening her controversial policy stances.
With just 80 days until Election Day, Harris will need to win over independents to win a tough general election battle against former President Donald Trump. During her three and a half years in the executive branch, she has examined and reconsidered her policy stances, and some have changed.
“The vice presidential position has been shaped by three years of effective governance of the Biden-Harris Administration,” a Harris campaign adviser said. Less than a month into her presidential bid, Harris and her advisers are still working out the key positions and policy initiatives she will unveil during the campaign.
Trump has changed his policy stance on issues such as abortion over the years. Vote by Mail Some even call Harris a “chameleon.”
A month into her surprise presidential campaign, Harris has little new to offer on the policy front so far. But she has shifted her positions on some issues since she first ran for president. A campaign spokesman described Harris’ approach as “pragmatic” and said it contrasted with Trump’s “extreme views.” Project 2025 agenda.”
“This approach has enabled the Biden-Harris Administration to make bipartisan breakthroughs on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention,” said Mia Ellenberg, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign. “As president, she will take that same pragmatic approach and focus on commonsense solutions for progress.”
Single-Payer Health Care and “Medicare for All”
During the 2019 campaign, Ms Harris’s position on the future of private health insurance was at times confusing, with Joe Biden’s campaign manager at the time, Kate Bedingfield, saying she had “long been ambivalent about where she stood on American health care.”
During a 2019 primary debate, Ms Harris raised her hand when a moderator asked the candidates if they would abolish private health insurance. She quickly retracted the statement and said she would not work on abolishing private health insurance.
Earlier that year, in April 2019, Harris Co-organized by Senator Bernie Sanders “Medicare for All” BillThe bill would eliminate private health insurance and replace it with a single government-run insurer that would cover all Americans.
Harris unveiled her health care plan in 2019, which would move the US towards government-sponsored health insurance over a decade but would not eliminate private health insurance altogether.
“As part of this system, we will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans that comply with strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits,” Harris said at the time. “Medicare will set the rules for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurers will follow those rules, not the other way around.”
Campaign officials say Harris does not intend to push for a single-payer government health insurance system as president.
The vice president plans to work to lower health care costs through other means, including through his administration’s policies. Current Initiatives Campaign officials have said they want Medicare to negotiate with drug companies to lower the costs of some drugs. At a recent event in Atlanta, Harris vowed to “take on Big Pharma and cap prescription drug costs for all Americans,” and Biden and Harris announced Thursday that Medicare had reached price agreements with drug companies for 10 drugs selected in the administration’s first round of negotiations. The drugs are used to treat heart failure, blood clots, diabetes, arthritis, Crohn’s disease and other illnesses and conditions.
“Our plan will reduce costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year,” Harris said.
Hydraulic fracturing
As a candidate in September 2019, Harris At CNN Town Hall “There’s no question that I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
“We should start from day one with what we can do around public lands, right?” she said at the time. “And we have to put legislation in place, but yes, this is the job I took on in California. I have a history of working on this issue. … We have to acknowledge that the residual impacts of fracking on the health and safety of our communities are enormous.”
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, a process that uses drilling and chemicals to extract oil and natural gas from rock formations.
At a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, Trump said Harris is “against fracking, she’s against oil drilling” and would ban it.
But Harris’ campaign has been vague about where she currently stands, pointing to her support for clean energy and the expansion of energy jobs under the Biden administration.
“VP Harris is proud to have cast the deciding vote for the largest investment ever to address the climate crisis, and under a Biden-Harris Administration, America will be more energy secure than ever before and domestic energy production will be at an all-time high,” a campaign spokesperson said. “VP Harris is focused on a future where all Americans have access to clean air, clean water and affordable, reliable energy, but Trump’s lies are a clear attempt to distract attention from his own agenda to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”
The Biden administration has sought to make it more expensive for oil and gas companies to conduct hydraulic fracturing on public lands, but has not banned it. Hydraulic fracturing On public land.
Size of the Supreme Court
During her presidential run, Harris said she was open to pursuing an expansion of the Supreme Court: “I’d be interested in having that conversation” when asked at a forum in New Hampshire in May 2019 how she felt about adding more justices to the nine-member court.
Harris’ campaign has not provided many details about her current position, but a campaign official said she Supreme Court Reform Proposal Biden made the announcement last month.
Those reforms include imposing term limits on judges, requiring them to abide by binding ethics rules and ratifying a constitutional amendment to limit presidential immunity. Biden’s proposed reforms do not include expanding the size of the Supreme Court. All of these reforms would require significant support from Congress.
