As a struggling presidential candidate in 2019, Kamala Harris embraced a slew of far-left policy positions on energy, immigration, health care, and guns. Now, as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Harris is tossing those positions aside through anonymous statements to the press.
So what prompted the reversals, and what policies do Harris support now? She hasn’t said.
Harris has yet to lay out a detailed policy agenda or sit for an interview since she was crowned the Democratic presidential nominee, and her campaign website does not include a policy page. But her aides have made clear that her agenda will not be the same as her old one.
During brief exchanges with reporters on Thursday and Saturday, Harris pledged to release a policy platform this week and schedule a formal interview “before the end of the month.” In the meantime, here’s a guide to Harris’s many flip-flops.
Oil and Gas Drilling
Harris endorsed a total ban on fracking during her 2019 campaign, criticizing the practice as unsafe.
“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said during a Sept. 2019 CNN town hall. “We have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the impact on the health and safety of communities.”
Harris walked back that position one year later, though she did not say she supported fracking herself. Instead, she told CNN’s Dana Bash that she was “comfortable” with Biden’s pledge not to ban fracking.
“Joe Biden has said, quote, ‘I am not banning fracking.’ During your primary campaign, you said that you supported a ban. Are you comfortable with Joe Biden’s position?” Bash asked.
“Yes,” Harris responded, “because Joe is saying … those are good-paying jobs in places like Pennsylvania.”
In an anonymous statement sent to Politico last month, a campaign spokesman said Harris “would not ban fracking.”
Illegal Border Crossings
Harris was one of 11 candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary to pledge to decriminalize border crossings.
During a June 2019 debate, then-Telemundo anchor José DÃaz-Balart asked participants to “raise your hand if you think it should be a civil offense rather than a crime to cross the border without documentation.” Harris raised her hand.
One year earlier, as a senator, Harris flirted with abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“There’s no question that we’ve got to critically reexamine ICE and its role, and the way that it is being administered, and the work it is doing,” she said after then-NBC anchor Kasie Hunt asked whether she supports abolishing the agency. “And we need to probably think about starting from scratch.”
On Friday, an anonymous campaign official told Axios that Harris believes “unauthorized border crossings are illegal.”
Medicare for All
Harris’s health care plan was perhaps the most controversial part of her first presidential bid.
A two-time cosponsor of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I., Vt.) Medicare for All bill as a senator, Harris called to eliminate private health insurance in favor of a single-payer system during a January 2019 town hall.
“I believe the solution—and I actually feel very strongly about this—is that we need to have Medicare for All. That’s just the bottom line,” Harris said. “What we know is that to live in a civil society, to be true to the ideals and the spirit of who we say we are as a country, we have to appreciate and understand that access to health care … should not be thought of as a privilege. It should be understood to be a right.”
Pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper on whether she would allow Americans to keep their private health insurance, Harris responded, “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.” When the position prompted criticism, Harris walked it back, releasing a Medicare for All plan that preserved a role for private companies.
Now, Harris does not support Medicare for All in any form, an anonymous campaign official told The Hill last month.
“She no longer backs a single-payer health care system, after previously endorsing a ‘Medicare for All’ proposal, the campaign official confirmed,” according to The Hill.
Mandatory Gun Buybacks
Harris during her first presidential campaign explicitly endorsed the mandatory confiscation of legally owned firearms.
“We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” she said during an Oct. 2019 March for Our Lives policy forum. “It’s got to be smart. We’ve got to do it the right way. But there are 5 million [assault weapons] at least, some estimate as many as 10 million, and we’re going to have to have smart public policy that’s about taking those off the streets, but doing it the right way.”
Harris during a June 2019 debate also called for a mandatory buyback program. She pledged to implement the policy via executive action if Congress failed to pass it during her first 100 days in office.
“The problem is Congress has not had the courage to act,” she said. “Which is why, when elected the president of the United States, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together, bring all these good ideas together and put a bill on my desk for signature, and if they do not I will take executive action.”
Last month, anonymous campaign officials told the New York Times that Harris supports “Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.”
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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