(Headline USA) Even a left-wing columnist for the Washington Post admitted this week that Vice President Kamala Harris’s recently announced economic plan to ban “price-gouging” was communist.
Amid growing scrutiny over her lack of clear policies, Harris teased part of her economic agenda on Wednesday, saying she would call for a federal ban on “price-gouging” by corporations if elected in November.
On one hand, the move sought to recognize the Biden administration’s failure to adequately address the cost-of-living crisis, as Harris seeks to distance herself from her current boss.
On the other hand, in order to avoid having to curtail profligate government spending and draconian regulations on the energy industry, Harris was forced to defend President Joe Biden’s claim—contrary to reality—that “corporate greed” was the root cause of the problem, rather than the failed leftist policies his administration has embraced.
Harris’s novel solution was to double down on Biden’s deflection, forcing private retailers to eat the cost by imposing fixed prices for certain goods.
But according to WaPo columnist Catherine Rampell, it’s “hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is.”
In a piece titled, “When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?” Rampell blasted Harris for endorsing a “sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food.”
Under Harris’s proposal, “supply and demand would no longer determine prices on profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would,” she said. “The [Federal Trade Commission] would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.”
Moreover, Harris’s plan does not explain what would qualify as “price-gouging” under the ban.
“What are these ‘clear rules of the road’ or the thresholds that determine when a price or profit level becomes ‘excessive’? The memo doesn’t say, and the campaign did not answer questions I sent seeking clarification,” Rampell wrote.
Former President Donald Trump responded to Harris’s economic plan—which she formally rolled out Friday at a campaign stop in Raleigh, N.C.—with a new nickname for her: “Comrade Kamala.”
“We call it the ‘Maduro plan,’ like something straight out of Venezuela or the Soviet Union,” Trump said on Thursday during a press conference. “It is an admission that her economic policies have totally failed and caused really a catastrophe for our country and, beyond that, a catastrophe in the world.”
Trump argued that the way to bring down prices was to increase the U.S.’s output across the board.
“So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one,” he said.
“We will end Kamala’s war on American energy, and we will drill baby drill,” he added. “We’re going to drill baby drill—that’s going to bring down prices of everything, because energy brought it up.”
