Donald Trump supporters are in an uproar over ABC hosts David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly fact-checking Trump, while ignoring what they say were Kamala Harris’ many lies and deceptive statements. What’s the truth?
Breaking Battlegrounds is taking a deep dive for you. This is the first in a multi-part series breaking down every one of Kamala Harris’ responses in the debate one-by-one.
Was Harris being honest? Let’s take a look…
Q1) Economy: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Harris: “So, I was raised as a middle-class kid.”
FACT CHECK: Harris is the daughter of a Stanford professor father and biomedical researcher mother who worked for the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory. The neighborhood she grew up near Montreal, Canada – Westmount – is “Montreal’s Most Expensive Area to Live.” Harris’s paternal grandmother, Christiana Brown, is also the descendent of Hamilton Brown who, according to the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, was a wealthy plantation owner and slaver who appears to have left substantial sums to his heirs.
VERDICT: False. Harris is a child of significant wealth and privilege
Harris: “And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America.”
FACT CHECK: This is the Harris plan, which is heavy on platitudes, light on actual policy. And here is the Trump plan, which has FAR more detail and numerous elements designed to help working-and-middle class folks.
VERDICT: False. Trump and Harris both have plans to help the middle and working-class. On balance, Trump has more programs detailed with greater specificity aimed at boosting everyday Americans.
Harris: “Because here’s the thing. We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people.”
FACT CHECK: This is an accurate statement, though Harris provided no plan to address the issue at the debate, she has announced her support for a $25,000 government grant to first time homebuyers. However, many economists note that without an increase in the housing supply – a problem Harris has provided no concrete answers for – all this program would do is increase the price of starter homes by $25,000.
VERDICT: True, but deceptive. Housing prices are now a major barrier to upward mobility, so Harris’ basic statement is correct, but she did not cite her proposed grant program – her only specified plan in this area – and a policy that is highly questionable to begin with.
Harris: We know that young families need support to raise their children. And I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time.”
FACT CHECK: Here is the history of the Child Tax Credit. Harris’ plan would not be the “largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time” – it would the biggest ever. However, it is worth noting that this is a relatively new policy proposal from Harris, but one Donald Trump has been pushing for a long time, and delivered on when Trump expanded the credit during his first term as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (aka the ‘Trump Tax Cut’). Also worth noting that the benefits from the Child Tax Credit have largely accrued to middle-and-upper income parents: “The result was a program primarily benefiting middle and upper middle-class families. These families received the largest child tax credits on average in 2019. Married couples in the top 20% to 40% tax bracket received an average payment of $3,951.
The refund formula meant that the bottom 20% of the income earners received the least from the child tax credit. For single parents in this lowest bracket, the average child tax credit was $75. For married couples, that increased to $760. The bottom quintile of income earners had the lowest percentage of families that claimed the child tax credit at 3%.”
VERDICT: Mostly True, with the caveat that Trump supports a similar program.
Harris: “My plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to start-up small businesses, knowing they are part of the backbone of America’s economy.”
FACT CHECK: Harris’ website specifies this proposal as an expansion of the business startup expense deduction from $5,000 to $50,000.
VERDICT: True (Not gonna lie: this would be a smart move, and since Harris is stealing a lot of Trump’s talking points on the campaign trail, this is one Trump should steal right back. It’s a good idea.)
Harris: “My opponent, on the other hand, his plan is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in $5 trillion to America’s deficit.”
FACT CHECK: Harris is referring to the 2017 Trump Tax Cut which expires at the end of 2025. IRS data shows that these tax cuts, which did apply across the board, significantly benefitted working-and-middle class individuals. Additionally, in the wake of passing the tax cuts, total U.S. federal revenues increased, hitting record highs.
VERDICT: False. Harris’ lie has been a standard Democrat talking point since 2017, mostly goes unchecked by major media, and is entirely false.
Harris: “My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month. Economists have said that Trump’s sales tax would actually result for middle-class families in about $4,000 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle-class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires.”
FACT CHECK: Harris is using deceptive language to call tariffs on foreign trade that Trump initiated a “sales tax.” Tariffs are a tax, and do have an impact on costs since – fundamentally – any taxation is just another line item in corporate calculation of costs, and is added to the final price of products. But, as Trump noted in the debate, the Biden-Harris White House has had more than 3 years to remove Tariffs Trump placed on China and others, and hasn’t done so – for good reason.
VERDICT: False. Tariffs may act as a tax, but their primary purpose is to serve as a tool to bring other nations into compliance, or to the negotiating table, in response to unfair trade practices like those of China. Additionally, these tariffs have been in place for years now, and have not resulted in a 20 percent increase in costs by themselves.
Summary: Harris’ response to the first debate question about the economy contained four outright lies, one deceptive answer, one partial truth, and one true policy statement. It is also worth noting that Harris avoided answering the actual question (Are people better off now than 4 years ago?).
(If you missed it, and you enjoy torturing yourself, you can find the full debate here.)
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
