During Vice President Kamala Harris’ first interview as the Democratic Party’s official nominee for president, she insisted her “values have not changed,” pointing to her work to promote the Green New Deal as an example.
“The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash Thursday. “You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”
But Harris’ remarks do not align with a statement her campaign put out last week, indicating she “does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” a main component of the progressive climate package Harris claims to still support. Similarly, her support for “metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time” also diverges from such a claim.
Subsequently, news outlet Axios reached out to the Harris campaign last week, asking for clarification of the vice president’s position. Yesterday, the campaign responded to Axios, but declined to comment on the matter. Fox News Digital also reached out to the Harris campaign repeatedly and asked for clarification on how Harris’ lack of support for electric vehicle mandates is in line with her values, particularly when it’s a policy measure she has promoted more than once. Fox News Digital did not receive a response.
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In addition to supporting the Green New Deal, which included EV mandates, Harris also sponsored a bill during her time as a U.S. senator that sought to create a “national zero-emission vehicle standard,” which would have required all passenger vehicles to be electric by 2040. Meanwhile, Harris ran on a platform as a presidential candidate in 2019 that called for mandates to phase out gas-powered vehicles even sooner, in 2035. After the Biden-Harris ticket won in 2020, Harris also pledged that all new medium- and heavy-duty vehicles would be “zero-emission” by 2030.
A Tesla charges at an electric vehicle charging station in New York.
“The American people don’t want top-down, one-size-fits-all energy and climate policies like federal EV mandates,” said Chris Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group focused on limited government and conservative approaches to environmental issues.
“We should pursue an all-of-the-above energy dominance strategy that prioritizes affordable, reliable, and increasingly cleaner energy solutions, rooted in American innovation and competition with China. From nuclear energy to permitting reform, this energy dominance agenda tackles both environmental and economic concerns to make America the cleanest and most prosperous nation in the world.”
Barnard added that Harris “flip-flopping” on issues as important as the future of American energy “is neither productive nor compelling.”
Vice President Kamala Harris
On health care, Harris campaign officials have said the vice president does not support “Medicare-for-all.” However, Harris has yet to share publicly that she is not in favor of a single-payer health care system after indicating during a 2019 debate that she would “abolish” private health care in favor of a “government-run plan.” Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign earlier this week for clarity on Harris’ position when it comes to health care, but did not receive a response.
During Harris’s CNN interview last week, she also argued that she made it clear as the vice presidential nominee in 2020 that she does not wish to ban fracking, despite indicating as a presidential nominee in 2019 that she was “in favor of banning fracking” on federal land.
Politico changed a headline focused on Vice President Harris’ position on fracking. Original News Source Link – Fox News
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