Vice President Kamala Harris proposed a dramatic expansion of tax deductions and other initiatives to spur small business creation during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Wednesday as she attempts to sell her economic agenda during the final stretch of the presidential campaign.
“My vision of an opportunity economy is one where everyone can compete and have a real chance to succeed. Where everyone, regardless of who they are, where they start, can build wealth, including intergenerational wealth,” Harris said in North Hampton, N.H. “Now I'm setting what some, I'm sure, are gonna call a very ambitious goal. But you know what, I think we should admire ambition in each other. So I want to see 25 million new small business applications by the end of my first term.”
Reaching such a goal would mark an increase from the 19 million the White House says have been filed during the Biden administration thus far.
Harris proposed expanding small business tax deductions for startup expenses from $5,000 to $50,000 and launching a fund for community banks and financial institutions to cover the interest costs of their expansion. The average startup cost for a new business is $40,000.
She also briefly addressed the school shooting in Bartow County, Ga., on Wednesday that left two students and two teachers dead with another nine injured.
“This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies. And it's just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive. It's senseless. We’ve got to stop it,” Harris said. “It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Harris, who leads the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention, then said she was going “off script” and recalled traveling the country as part of a college tour and asking students if they had to undergo active shooter drills between kindergarten and 12th grade. In line with Department of Education data, nearly every student raised their hand to say they had, Harris recounted.
“Our kids are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential and some part of their big, beautiful brain is concerned about a shooter busting through the door of the classroom. It does not have to be this way. It does not have to be this way,” Harris said. “This is one of the many issues that's at stake in this election. So, New Hampshire, look, we have 62 days to go.”
Former President Donald Trump, Harris’ Republican rival, condemned the shooting on Wednesday, but largely opposes any restrictions on firearms even after pursuing incremental regulations during his four years in the White House. His campaign seized on Harris’ remarks on Wednesday and highlighted her 2019 call for a mandatory gun buyback program for military-style assault rifles, describing it as “gun confiscation.” A Harris campaign official told The Hill last week she would not advocate for that policy as she pursues the presidency for a second time.
In New Hampshire -- a state that President Joe Biden won by around seven percentage points in 2020 but also one that Trump barely lost in 2016 -- Harris contrasted her “fight for freedom” with Trump’s economic and social policy agenda.
“If Donald Trump were to win in November, he intends to end the Affordable Care Act, which would significantly increase costs on small businesses, as we know,” Harris said, before being interrupted by someone in the crowd yelling about Trump’s legal troubles.
“Well, you know what? The courts are gonna handle that and we will handle November. How about that?” she shouted back.
The Harris campaign says it has 17 field offices operating in coordination with the state Democratic party across New Hampshire, compared to one for Trump’s campaign. Some in the state were angry that Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to make South Carolina the first state to vote in the party's presidential primary this year — displacing Iowa's caucus and a first-in-the-nation primary New Hampshire held for more than a century.
Trump has seized on the primary calendar change, posting on his social media account on Tuesday that Harris “sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire because of the fact that they disrespected it in their primary and never showed up."
Harris outlined her plan to drive growth of small businesses at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, where she was introduced by the brewery's owners, Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier, and head chef Carrie Dahlgren. According to Carrier, the brewery was able to open at its current location thanks to a small business credit from Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, and installed solar panels via the administration's Rural Energy for America Program.
“As a small business, we've never, I mean we've never, ever stepped out into the political arena, but at this point, we kind of figured, do we have a choice?” Carrier said. “It's a choice we have on one side between accepting and appreciating differences, leading with love and openness and empathy versus a side that thrives on hate and fear tactics. So it’s not really a choice to us. It’s a no-brainer.”
Under the proposal Harris outlined on Wednesday, new businesses can wait to claim a deduction until they turn a profit. A small business that made $15,000 its first year could deduct that amount and save the remaining $35,000 deduction for the future. Businesses that take a loss could also wait to take the deduction.
“For all of those who are or know of small business owners, the thing I love about you is that you're not only leaders in business, you are civic leaders, you are community leaders, you are mentors,” Harris said, boasting that small businesses employ around half of all private sector workers in the U.S.
Small business owners, she continued, are “building a better future for their employees and for the people they love in their communities. And by extension, they're building a stronger middle class and a stronger America for us all. And so all of this is why, as president, one of my highest priorities will be to strengthen America's small businesses.”
To cut “unnecessary red tape,” Harris proposed a new standard deduction for entrepreneurs and small businesses to make it easier for them to file taxes, comparing it to the truncated 1040EZ form used by the IRS until 2018. She also plans to make it easier for workers to do their jobs across state lines and for businesses to expand in additional states.
After the speech, Harris taped a radio interview with comedian Rickey Smiley that’s set to air Friday morning and swung by a pretzel factory in Portsmouth, N.H.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.