Vice President Kamala Harris took a long pause during her MSNBC interview when faced with a question about how she would pay for her economic plans.
The moment came early in an interview when Harris responded to slow-burning questions like “Can we trust you?”
Interviewer Stephanie Ruhle asked Harris, who was giving her first network television interview since securing her party’s nomination, how she would pay for her economic plans.
“If you can’t raise corporate taxes or if the Republican Party takes control of the Senate, where do you get the money to do it?” her interviewer asked, after Harris outlined some of her plans, such as a $6,000 credit for young couples or subsidies for new small businesses.
Republicans have a good chance of taking the chamber from the narrow Democratic majority, and the Democratic-held Montana seat is looking increasingly vulnerable.
“But we’re going to have to raise corporate taxes,” Harris told him after a pause.
“We’re going to have to raise money, we’re going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and the billionaires pay their fair share. That’s it,” Harris said.
“We’re going to have to raise corporate taxes,” Vice President Kamala Harris said when asked how she would fund her economic plans.
She did not discuss the details of her plan, which includes a new 25 percent minimum tax on individuals with assets of more than $100 million, an increase in capital gains and an increase in the corporate tax rate to 28 percent.
Ruhle herself said after the interview: “He doesn’t answer the question… Where is he going to get the money from?”
“He said we just have to do it. And that’s great and it’s a campaign promise,” he added.
The moment came in an interview in which Harris criticized Trump for wanting to expand the range of tax cuts from 2017.
“The fact is Donald Trump has a history of taking care of very rich people, and I’m not mad at anyone for being rich, but they should pay their fair share,” Harris said.
Harris said her plan would cut taxes for 100 million Americans, protecting those who earn less than $400,000 a year.
He talked about building an economy where people have “the ability to buy a house, to start a business, to take a nice vacation once in a while.”
He also responded to Trump’s claims that he never worked at McDonald’s, revealing that he recited one of the fast food chain’s famous jingles.
But the candidate avoided major setbacks after facing pressure from Republicans and the media to grant more interviews.
Ruhle also asked Harris how she could raise taxes on corporations without sending them overseas, where taxes were cheaper.
“I work with a lot of CEOs and I’ve spent a lot of time with them. Let me tell you that business leaders who are actually part of the engine of the U.S. economy agree that people should pay their fair share,” he said.
Harris largely avoided stumbles in a relatively safe space, on a day when she was campaigning in battleground Pennsylvania while Trump attacked her in battleground North Carolina.
His first interview since his promotion, on CNN, was more fraught with problems.
He is in a tight race with Donald Trump, who delivered a speech on his economic plans this week in Georgia where he promised to “take jobs from other countries” and once again took aim at his rivals.
President Biden’s budget calls for raising taxes on corporations and higher-income individuals to raise about $5 trillion.
