KAMALA HARRIS, REPARATIONS, AND GUARANTEED INCOME. Kamala Harris has been running for president for 44 days. So far, even though she is the vice president of the United States, she has not been subjected to the intense scrutiny directed at all other major-party candidates for president who reach this point. Certainly she has not been subjected to a fraction of the scrutiny her opponent, former President Donald Trump, has experienced in the last eight years, in and out of office.
Even Harris’s first run for president, which lasted for 11 months in 2019, far longer than her run today, has not received the attention it should receive. For example, on two controversial topics, reparations and what is known as universal basic income, Harris took positions in her first campaign that have barely been explored in her second.
“I think there has to be some form of reparations, and we can discuss what that is,” Harris told the Root in February 2019. She promised the Rev. Al Sharpton that as president, she would sign into law a measure establishing a reparations study commission. She became a co-sponsor of such a bill in the Senate. Harris was vague about financial reparations or, if so, the size of financial reparations, but she left no doubt that she supported some sort of reparations to “correct course” for black people.
“Look — we’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery,” Harris told the Root. “We’re looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow. We’re looking at legalized segregation and, in fact, segregation on so many levels that exist today based on race. And there has not been any kind of intervention, understanding the harm and the damage that occurred, to correct course.” When the host asked, “As president, you would be willing to lead a conversation on what reparations for black people would be like?” Harris answered, “Yes, including things like what we should be doing to take very seriously undiagnosed and untreated trauma. Take that very seriously. And what kind of resources are we going to put in that — what kind of resources are we going to put in communities to help folks heal and be on an equal footing.” In sum, Harris supported a “serious intervention,” whatever that might be.
Now that Harris is running for president, after a secretive group of Democratic power brokers pushed President Joe Biden out of the race, there hasn’t been much talk about reparations. Zero, actually, at least from Harris herself. (As this newsletter was written, the Washington Post published a piece about the issue, “Advocates hope Harris will boost momentum on reparations to black Americans.”) For Harris, questions about reparations would be similar to questions about taxes, healthcare, energy, and other issues on which she appears to have changed positions from 2019: Do you still believe what you said then?
There is a related issue that has also not received much attention, and that is Harris’s position on the idea of a guaranteed income. A few weeks before she announced her presidential campaign in January 2019, Harris introduced a bill she called the “LIFT the Middle Class Act.” (“LIFT” stood for “Livable Incomes for Families Today.”) The LIFT Act would have sent a monthly payment of up to $500 to married couples who work and have incomes above $6,000 a year and below $100,000. The money would be in addition to any other government transfer payments they might receive.
The liberal policy website Vox was thrilled. Harris’s LIFT Act, Vox said, was “arguably the closest thing that any 2020 contender has proposed to a universal basic income, an idea that is exactly what it sounds like: a guaranteed cash benefit to every American. Harris’s office claims 80 million total Americans would benefit in some way. That’s not everyone, as under a true UBI, but it’s a big step.”
As she went through her campaign, Harris tied the LIFT Act to reparations, as if LIFT equaled a form of reparations without actually being reparations. “We had over 200 years of slavery. We had Jim Crow for almost a century,” she told theGrio, a black news and opinion site. “We had legalized discrimination and segregation, and now we have segregation and discrimination that is not legal but still exists and is a barrier to progress. We have disparities around housing, we have disparities around education, we have disparities around income. And we have to recognize that everybody did not start out on an equal footing in this country, and in particular, black people have not. And so we have got to recognize that and do something about that and give folks a lift up, and that’s why, for example, I’m proposing the LIFT Act.”
The host asked why Harris did not make the bill specifically targeted toward African Americans. Harris seemed exasperated and answered that the bill was specially designed to focus on the issues that would directly benefit the largest number of “black children, black families, black homeowners.”
Looking at a number of interviews Harris did on the LIFT Act during the 2019 campaign, it was common for hosts who favored reparations to become slightly frustrated that Harris was presenting LIFT as something that played the role of a reparations bill but was not specifically a reparations bill. When Harris appeared on The Breakfast Club to pitch the legislation, the host listened as she made her case about 200 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow and continuing racism in America. Finally, the host said, “So you are for some type of reparations?” Harris responded, “Yes, I am. Yes, I am.”