Morning Report — Harris on housing more evolution than revolution

Housing advocates were elated last week to hear Vice President Harris use one particular phrase in her nomination acceptance speech. “We will end America’s housing shortage,” she vowed in Chicago.

As if inventing a new formula, Harris explained, “We will create what I call an opportunity economy, an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed.”

The vice president has been knocked for campaigning on themes more than governance details and economic charts. Her campaign released a new ad Tuesday to highlight her plans to build 3 million housing units as part of her platform to curb inflation. If she has a wonky streak, she might add details tonight during her interview with CNN and during a debate with former President Trump in Philadelphia on Sept. 10.

HARRIS IS AN ECONOMIC DREAMWEAVER. That includes housing. A new Wall Street Journal survey reported Wednesday found 89 percent of respondents said owning a home is either essential or important to their vision of the future, but only 10 percent said homeownership is easy or somewhat easy to achieve.

For decades, Democratic administrations have been cheerleaders for home ownership, fans of easy borrowing, proponents of more affordable houses to buy or rent and promoters of homebuilding and more construction jobs. The federal focus under President Biden and Harris has shifted to the supply problem: how the government can incentivize buying or renting “starter” housing to meet demand and reduce high costs for many Americans eager to enter the middle-class and stay there.

The gospel among Democratic candidates and left-leaning presidents is that the government can knock down barriers and help build wealth. Conservatives say they worry about market distortions and the long-term costs to taxpayers.

OPPORTUNITY REDUX: “We got elected to try a new approach, to expand opportunity, not government, to increase investment, and to show literally that we can reinvent government,” former President Clinton said soon after his 1993 inauguration. Part of his legacy was fiscal discipline and bank deregulation. The focus may have upped homeownership statistics, but his approach later sparked much second-guessing as the 2008-2009 financial crisis hit.

Former President Obama’s domestic agenda as he entered office was upended by toxic mortgages, greedy banks, a riptide of home foreclosures and the Great Recession. By his second term, he was still explaining the government’s programs aimed at helping Americans recover from the housing crisis. 

“For the last year or so, we’ve had an endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals that shift focus away from what we need to do to shore up middle-class families and create ladders of opportunity for folks to get into the middle class,” he said in 2013.

Jason Furman, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama who also served on the staff of the Clinton National Economic Council, told Morning Report’s Alexis Simendinger that Harris’s economic views “are not fully defined, but broadly they appear to be more of an evolution from Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden than any sort of revolution.”

The vice president’s approach to homeownership is “a distinct improvement on her predecessors, emphasizing the need for more housing supply, embracing the role of the private sector in providing that supply and signaling her support for the YIMBY [“Yes in My Backyard” pro-housing] movement that is scoring successes in communities across the country,”said Furman, a professor of economic policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard University.

SUPPLY + DETAILS: During the financial meltdown and its aftermath, home construction slowed. Lending standards tightened. Another wave of housing troubles emerged, including supply shortages, soaring demand, escalating prices and higher borrowing costs. Investors bought up distressed housing inventories as modest-income households struggled to save. Local regulatory and cost barriers to new construction added to housing shortages in many communities.

Harris, savvy about California’s famously expensive housing market, supply challenges and local regulatory and environmental debates, says she’s attuned to the middle-class pain Americans experience when they can’t afford monthly mortgages or rental rates. 

Her housing agenda relies on federal tax changes, and some of her ideas have bipartisan support. Her pitch that Uncle Sam offer qualified first-time homebuyers $25,000 for use with a down payment, which is an expansion of a proposal in Biden’s budget, has run into Republican resistance on Capitol Hill. Critics argue it would raise the price of homes on the market by an equivalent amount.

And that assistance, if enacted for the four-year window Harris specifies, would add about $100 billion to the 10-year deficit, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“She has no clue how she’d pay for $25,000 to every first-time homebuyer, including illegals,” Trump said during an event in York, Pa., last week. His claim was a tactical leap; there is no evidence Harris seeks to support home purchases by immigrants without legal status.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Jacquelyn Martin | Vice President Harris, campaigning Wednesday by bus in South Georgia, posed with some of her supporters in Savannah. 

CAMPAIGNS & POLITICS

GEORGIA ON THEIR MINDS: Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are in Georgia for the second day of a two-day bus tour through the southeast part of the Peach State — part of an effort to reach voters in more rural pockets of the battleground state. While in Georgia, the two will host a rally in Savannah and sit down tonight with CNN’s Dana Bash, marking Harris’s first sit-down interview since President Biden passed her the torch. 

Flashing back to 2021, The Hill’s Alex Gangitano notes that Harris’s rocky interview with NBC’s Lester Holt in part marked the first year of her vice presidency and gave Republicans plenty of fodder to challenge her on topics like immigration. 

In The Memo, The Hill’s Niall Stanage lays out five things to watch for in the interview: from potential gaffes to how tough the questions are.

And The Hill’s reporters propose five tough questions for Harris and Walz, on topics such as the administration’s response to Gaza, immigration and the border.

Politico: Democrats are chasing a high-risk, high-reward strategy in Georgia. If they want to win the state again, they have to improve their margins, particularly among Black and working-class voters.

ZOOM OUT: Harris and Trump are locked in a tight race across seven battleground states, according to new polling from Emerson College Polling and The Hill. 

The survey found Harris edging out Trump in Georgia (49 percent to 48 percent), Michigan (50 percent to 47 percent) and Nevada (49 percent to 48 percent). Meanwhile, Trump pulls slightly ahead in Arizona (50 percent to 47 percent), North Carolina (49 percent to 48 percent) and Wisconsin (49 percent to 48 percent). In Pennsylvania, the two are tied at 48 percent each. In all cases, the poll numbers fall within the margin of error, meaning the race is essentially tied in each of the swing states.

LONE STAR: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a Tuesday interview with NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas that the immigration and border issue in Texas has been “solved” but still exists nationally. Nexstar owns both NewsNation and The Hill. Abbott has continually clashed with the Biden administration over the influx of migrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border. After Harris took over the Democratic ticket, Abbott said he thinks the state needs to “triple” the razor wire barriers at the border.

“We’ve solved the Texas problem, but the United States problem — that requires a new president to make sure that we are actually going to secure our border,” Abbott said on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.”

In the interview, Abbott spoke about his most controversial border actions, including a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said Texas could maintain a floating barrier in the Rio Grande. Installed more than a year ago, the buoy barrier is meant to dissuade migrants from crossing into the state. The Biden administration has accused Texas of violating the federal Rivers and Harbor Act and said immigration enforcement is the purview of the federal government.

But Abbott said people can expect to see “an increase” of the buoys in the Rio Grande even as he is waiting for the final court decision “before making that investment.”

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press / Carolyn Kaster | Former President Trump, pictured while campaigning Monday, continues to face legal jeopardy.

COURTS & INVESTIGATIONS

INDICTMENT WATCH: Special counsel Jack Smith has refined his election interference case against Trump, keeping the bulk of his original indictment in the wake of a Supreme Court decision granting former executives broad criminal immunity. The first words of Smith’s indictment no longer identify Trump as the 45th president of the United States, write The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch and Ella Lee, but instead refer to him as a candidate for office.

It’s the first of many shifts Smith said were designed “to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings,” but while the new indictment takes steps to account for numerous directives from the Supreme Court, his filing also shows prosecutors have preserved much of their case against Trump.

Meanwhile, the House task force investigating last month’s assassination attempt against Trump issued an extensive request Wednesday to the Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service for documents pertaining to the attack and interviews with Secret Service officials involved with the rally (The Hill). The FBI determined Trump’s shooter saw the Butler, Pa., rally as a “target of opportunity” (The Hill).

Trump himself claimed without evidence in a Tuesday interview broadcast that Biden and Harris had denied him sufficient Secret Service protection — and because of that were partly responsible for the shooting (The New York Times).

“Our people were always fighting to get more security, more Secret Service, and he knew that we didn’t have enough,” Trump said of Biden during an interview with television host Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me. They brought in the whole DOJ [Department of Justice] to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.”

THE SUPREME COURT on Wednesday discarded the Biden administration’s request to temporarily reinstate its new student debt plan that would lower payments for millions of borrowers. The Justice Department’s emergency appeal asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court ruling currently halting the plan as a legal challenge proceeds (The Hill). 

The Washington Post: The uncertain future of Biden’s student loan repayment plan, explained.

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press / Majdi Mohammed | The Israeli military launched airstrikes on the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, killing at least 10 Palestinians.

INTERNATIONAL

The Israeli military carried out raids and airstrikes Wednesday in multiple parts of the occupied West Bank, killing at least 10 Palestinians in the largest Israeli offensive in the area in years. Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the operation had been staged to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructure,” claiming that Iran was working to establish an “eastern front” against Israel (CNN).

“We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” he wrote on social media. “This is a war for all terms and purposes and we must win it.”

Over the course of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Israel has stepped up its raids in the West Bank, fueling discontent among communities where violence carried out by Israeli settlers has also surged (The Washington Post). 

Ukrainian authorities are scrambling to assess the damage caused by one of the biggest Russian airstrikes this week that targeted energy infrastructure across the country, further crippling a sector targeted by Moscow earlier this year and raising fears about winter blackouts (The Guardian).

The Hill: Senior officials from the U.S. and China agree to plan for a call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the coming weeks.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Matt Rourke | Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, has offered lighthearted home improvement advice on social media. 

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