KAMUNISM

Harris unveils budget-breaking $1.7 trillion economic plan that includes government price controls

Kamala Harris gave her first major policy speech yesterday and it was a doozy — a $1.7 trillion spending plan when the national debt already tops $35 trillion. She also proposed policing how much private companies charge for products, which economists note has failed in every communist country that has tried it.

RALEIGH, NC — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday unveiled the economic policies she would enact in her first 100 days in office — and it comes with a whopping estimated $1.7 trillion in handouts, as well as government price controls on groceries amid ravaging BidenHarris administration inflation.

Her economic plan includes measures to dole out $25,000 to help first-time homeowners with their down payments and give up to a $6,000 tax breaks for lower- and middle-income families who have a child in their first year of life. Harris did not say what incomes qualify as “lower” and “middle.”

The housing subsidies alone are “absolutely inflationary” and would “push a $2 trillion dollar deficit even higher,” Brian Riedl, a senior economic fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Post, referring to the already projected budget shortfall for 2024.

Those subsidies make up just $200 billion of the total $1.7 trillion handouts pledged to voters.

‘This is very reckless’

A slew of economists The Post spoke to slammed the plan’s hefty price tag amid an already-struggling economy.

“The CRFB estimates make it clear that the Harris agenda — like Biden’s before it — will be fiscally reckless and economically damaging,” Adam Michel, the director of Tax Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Post.

“Writing people large checks and enforcing price controls is a recipe for expanding demand and shrinking supply, creating shortages and necessitating rationing,” Michel said.

“This is very reckless to be adding this type of debt to our already existing mountain of debt,” Joel Griffith, an economic research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Post in reference to the rising national deficit that currently sits at $34 trillion and is expected to reach $50 trillion by 2034.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation in an analysis was particularly troubled by the lack of detail the veep provided over where the funding for the handouts would come.

“Harris’ agenda is missing details on how her proposed tax subsidies and expansions in federal programs would be paid for, risking a worsening debt trajectory,” the foundation said in an analysis.

“The combined cost of the proposals would likely exceed $2 trillion over 10 years, putting upward pressure on inflation to the extent they are deficit-financed and leading to a further prolonging of the Federal Reserve’s high-interestrate stance.”

Harris is also proposing giving tax incentives to businesses who build affordable housing and to those Americans building houses themselves.

“Harris’ tax agenda is problematic for three major reasons: it would further entrench social policy and spending into the tax code, it would subsidize home buyers rather than address supply constraints, and it does not specify sufficient offsets to pay for the subsidies, worsening an unsustainable debt trajectory,” the Tax Foundation said.

E.J. Antoni, a public-finance economist at The Heritage Foundation, told The Post that “the Harris agenda is even worse than the Biden agenda: it means more spending, more borrowing and more money printing to pay for it all.”

Cato budget and entitlement policy director Romina Boccia agreed with that assessment.

“Harris’ economic proposals are a recipe for higher inflation and widespread shortages of basic items necessary for living like food and housing,” Boccia said.

Riedl agreed, telling The Post that “price controls do not eliminate inflation — they only delay it, with huge shortages in the meantime.”