Harris: “My plan would grow the economy, his would shrink the economy”

After Vice President Harris outlined her pragmatic vision to help the middle class in her Pittsburgh speech today, she sat down with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC for an interview on her approach to building an Opportunity Economy.

In the interview, Vice President Harris drew a clear contrast between her New Way Forward for the Middle Class and Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda to impose a nearly $4,000 middle class tax hike, give handouts to billionaires, and crush American jobs.

“Donald Trump has a history of taking care of very rich people,” said Vice President Harris. “My perspective on the economy is, when you grow the middle class, America's economy is stronger.”

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Below are some key moments from Vice President Harris:

• “Not everyone, you know, gets handed stuff on a silver platter. And so my vision for the economy, I call it an opportunity economy, is about making sure that all Americans, wherever they start, wherever they are, have the ability to actually achieve those those dreams and those ambitions, which include, for middle class families, just being able to to know that their hard work allows them to get ahead, right? I think we can't, and we shouldn't aspire to have an economy that just allows people to get by. People want to do more than to just get by. People want to get ahead. And I come from the middle class.”

• “So first of all, when it relates to anybody making less than $400,000 a year, your taxes will not go up. Your taxes will not go up. And in fact, under my plan, taxes for 100 million Americans will actually be cut, including $6,000 a year for young couples for the first year of their child's life, in a tax cut, a tax credit essentially, by expansion of the Child Tax Credit.”

• “[Trump] lost manufacturing plants. Ask the auto workers how he lost auto plants. We have grown over 20 new auto plants.”

• “[Trump] has an agenda that would include making it more difficult for workers to earn overtime, an agenda that would include cutting off access to small business loans for small businesses [...] Top economists in our country, from Nobel laureates to people at Moody's and Goldman Sachs have compared my plan with his and said my plan would grow the economy, his would shrink the economy. Some of them have actually assessed that his plan would increase inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year.”

• “So the facts remain that Donald Trump has a history of taking care of very rich people. And I'm not mad at anybody for being rich, but they should pay their fair share. But tax cuts for the billionaires and the top corporations in our country and then not really paying much attention to middle-class families. My perspective on the economy is, when you grow the middle class, America's economy is stronger. And there's empirical evidence to prove my point correct.”

• “Donald Trump made a whole lot of promises that he did not meet. And one would argue, broke. Look at Lordstown. He said… ‘don't sell your homes.’ And what happened? It shut down, outsourcing under Donald Trump.”

• “It would be a sales tax on the American people. The independent economists have already measured this by this sales tax of doing a 20% tariff on all imports that he has described would be a 20% sales tax, in essence, on basic necessities for the average American worker, average American family, totaling almost $4,000 a year. That is no small matter. Here in Pittsburgh, when I'm talking to a group of folks who work here, who live here, and when they hear it might be $4,000 more a year for them, look, people can't afford that.”

• “Well, part of it is you don't just throw around the idea of just tariffs across the board, and that's part of the problem with Donald Trump. Frankly, and I say this in all sincerity, he's just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues. And one must be serious and have a plan and a real plan that's not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally, but actually putting the thought into what will be the return on the investment, what will be the economic impact on everyday people.”