Vice President Kamala Harris frequently emphasizes her middle-class upbringing, especially when discussing economic policy and the needs of American families. This was evident in last week’s vice-presidential debate, and it’s a recurring theme in her campaign speeches. She often states that she “grew up in a middle-class household” and positions herself as a champion for middle-class values and economic well-being. Harris has even suggested that “building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” implying her personal connection informs her policy priorities. However, a closer examination of her proposed policies reveals a different emphasis: expanding welfare programs rather than directly addressing the core issues facing the middle class.
During the unveiling of her economic agenda in August, Harris promised to be “laser-focused on creating opportunities for the middle class,” again referencing her upbringing. In a September debate, when asked if Americans were better off than four years prior, she responded, “So, I was raised as a middle-class kid,” in what many perceived as an irrelevant answer. Similarly, when pressed in an interview about specific plans to lower prices and improve affordability, Harris began by stating, “Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up in a middle-class family.”
This pattern of invoking her middle-class background has drawn criticism and even parody. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mocked these responses, suggesting that “I was born in the middle class” has become a deflective political tactic. The satirical website Babylon Bee humorously captured this sentiment with a headline: “‘I Was Born into a Middle-Class Family,’ Explains Wife When Husband Asks Why the Car Is on Fire.”
Critics argue that this rhetoric appears disingenuous, coming from a politician with significant financial resources. While it’s true Harris’s parents were accomplished professionals – her mother a biomedical scientist and her father a Stanford economics professor – the focus on her “humble roots” seems less about genuine relatability and more about framing her policy proposals, particularly welfare expansions, in a palatable “middle-class” context.
A prime example is Harris’s plan to “restore the expanded child tax credit” (CTC), the leading proposal in her economic policy playbook titled “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class.” Her plan highlights the 2021 CTC expansion as “one of the largest tax cuts ever passed for the middle-class,” suggesting it provided crucial support for middle-class families to cover essential expenses. She proposes reviving this “temporary middle-class tax relief” and making permanent a tax credit of up to $3,600 per child for the middle class and “hard-pressed working families.”
While presented as middle-class tax relief, the reality of the 2021 CTC expansion, and Harris’s proposal, is more nuanced. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), a nonpartisan body, estimated that only a portion of the 2021 CTC expansion – around $20 billion – was actually tax relief. The larger portion, exceeding $80 billion, consisted of increased benefits paid to parents who owed little or no federal income tax. The primary beneficiaries were, in fact, non-working parents who, for the first time, received full CTC payments, adding to existing welfare benefits.
This shift occurred because the 2021 expansion temporarily suspended the CTC’s work requirements and incentives, effectively reversing bipartisan welfare reforms enacted in the 1990s. These reforms aimed to encourage work among low-income parents. Critics argue that Harris’s plan to reinstate and make permanent these changes would further dismantle pro-work welfare policies. As The Washington Post noted in 2021, it signaled “[Goodbye, Clinton welfare reform. Hello, child tax credit],” indicating a significant shift in welfare policy. Under this expanded CTC, the IRS, as some have pointed out, became the nation’s largest distributor of welfare checks.
Harris’s policy playbook, despite its frequent appeals to the middle class, avoids mentioning the substantial expansion of welfare benefits embedded in proposals like the CTC. Just as her repeated references to her middle-class upbringing seem designed to deflect from the substance of her policies, the “middle-class” framing of welfare expansions serves a similar purpose. Ultimately, critics contend that no amount of middle-class rhetoric can disguise the true nature of Harris’s agenda: large-scale welfare programs for non-workers, funded by increased taxes on the broader population, including the very middle class she claims to represent.
