Since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential election, the conversation has largely focused on fundraising statistics, the energy she brings to the campaign and the political horse race with former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president. But lost amid the focus on her prowess as a presidential candidate is an important question: How would Harris govern if she won?
In the months ahead, Republicans will try to sell Georgians a false answer to that question. They’ll shortchange the vice president’s contributions to the administration’s successes and claim her policy portfolio was limited to the issues on which they want to fear monger. But the truth is that Harris’ fingerprints can be seen on many of the administration’s most powerful reforms. And though she’s received due credit at times — such as for the administration’s fight to protect reproductive rights — the true scope of her policy impact doesn’t always make the headlines.
Credit: Stephen Bobb Photography
Credit: Stephen Bobb Photography
But don’t take my word for it. With the vice president in Atlanta this week, it’s worth taking a look at the receipts. Over the past four years, Harris’ ideas and values shaped the best parts of the Biden agenda. From education and gun safety to equal pay and climate change, proposals Harris developed in the Senate and during her first presidential campaign are now government policy. Her influence is proof of her substantive credentials and provides a window into how she’d govern if elected president in November.
Take education. In 2019, then-Sen. Harris of California was the first candidate in history to propose a federal plan to raise teacher pay across the country. The plan was designed to close the pay gap between teachers and similarly educated professionals, which in Georgia is nearly 30%. She made the issue a focal point of the 2020 Democratic primary, with other candidates following her lead and releasing teacher pay plans of their own. Once in office, the Biden-Harris administration made the largest investment in teacher pay in history: $350 billion through the American Rescue Plan. The investment helped Georgia provide a $2,000 pay raise to every teacher in the state.
Last year, when U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said continuing to raise teacher pay was a top policy priority for the administration, he said, “at a minimum, no teacher should make less than the average salary of people with similar degrees in their state” — the central tenet of Harris’ teacher pay plan.
How about gun violence? In the 2020 cycle then-Senator Harris proposed a suite of executive actions to reduce gun violence because she knew Republicans would block significant gun reform. For example, she called for a “zero-tolerance policy” for gun dealers who willfully violate the law and proposed narrowing background check loopholes through executive action. Once in office, Harris was charged with overseeing the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, where she turned both proposals into administration policy. Because of her leadership, the federal government is now revoking more licenses from lawbreaking gun dealers than ever before. That’s in sharp contrast with Trump, who revoked 56% fewer licenses from criminal gun stores, on average, each year.
Or take equal pay. In Georgia, women are paid only 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, a pay gap that’s larger than the national average. Traditionally, the burden is entirely on women to hold corporations accountable for pay discrimination through costly lawsuits. Corporations can hide their wage gaps, but women are forced to stand up in court just to get the pay they’ve earned. As a candidate, Harris proposed a novel idea to shift the burden: Require corporations to show they’re not engaging in pay discrimination and fine companies that fail to close their pay gaps.
The plan had specifics for how elements could be implemented through executive action. And that’s exactly what happened when the Biden-Harris administration took office. The administration borrowed heavily from the vice president’s campaign plan, including by strengthening pay equity audits of companies and limiting prior salary history in the hiring process.
Here’s one more: School buses make up 90% of the nation’s bus fleet and carry roughly 25 million children each day. In the Senate, Harris led the effort to phase in new electric buses to mitigate students’ and drivers’ exposure to harmful pollutants and help address the climate crisis. That legislation formed the basis of a $5 billion grant program in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Earlier this year, the program awarded millions of dollars to nine Georgia school districts in rural areas across the state, allowing them to buy new electric school buses.
If you step back from the specifics, you can begin to see themes. Harris knows how to turn ideas into action. She has substantive command across issue areas and, as vice president, she’s clearly learned how to use the powers of the executive branch to make change. And perhaps most important, unlike Trump, she has used those powers to solve real problems, not to attack freedom and democracy for her own personal gains.
Corey Ciorciari is a partner at Evergreen Strategy Group. He previously served as senior policy adviser to then-Sen. Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign.
About the Author
