WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used a New Hampshire campaign stop on Wednesday to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses, a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes.
Describing small businesses as "an essential foundation to our entire economy," Harris said she wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for startup expenses, with the goal of eventually spurring 25 million new small business applications over four years.
The speech is part of Harris' effort to strengthen her economic credentials with only two months until the end of the election.
"You're not only leaders in business. You're civic leaders," Harris said. She added, "You are part of the glue and the fabric that holds communities together."
Harris spoke at the Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, outside Portsmouth, and meet with co-founders Annette Lee and Nicole Carrier. Their brewery got support to open its current location through a small business credit and installed solar panels using federal programs championed by the Biden administration, according to the Harris campaign.
The campaign of Donald Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee, dismissed Harris' small business plan, noting that the vice president has promised to eliminate a package of tax cuts approved during his administration that are set to expire next year. Trump's campaign said those cuts "allowed business owners to deduct up to 20% of qualified business income," reduced taxes on new equipment purchases and took steps to bolster small businesses as compared to larger ones.
Before talking about small businesses, Harris addressed Wednesday's school shooting in Georgia.
"It's just outrageous that every day, in our country, in the United States of American, that parents have to send their parents to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive."
She added, "We've got to stop it. It doesn't have to be this way."
Harris' New Hampshire trip is a rare deviation for a candidate who is spending most of her time in Midwest and Sun Belt states with pivotal roles in November's election.
Since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Harris, the vice president has focused on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which have been the centerpiece of successful Democratic campaigns. She also has frequently visited Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, all of which Biden narrowly won in 2020, and North Carolina, which she hopes to flip from Trump.
Wednesday's stop comes after Harris marked Labor Day with Monday rallies in Detroit and Pittsburgh and before she heads back to Pittsburgh on Thursday — marking her 10th visit to Pennsylvania in 2024.
Trump has called for lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% — a break with Biden who in his budget proposal in March suggested setting the corporate tax rate at 28%. Harris has released relatively few major policy proposals in the roughly six weeks since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket, but has not suggested she's planning to deviate greatly from his administration on tax policy.
The small business plan Harris is presenting has lots that the business community would like. But that contrasts another proposal Harris unveiled last month, where she promised to help fight inflation by working to combat "price gouging" from food producers that she suggests have driven grocery store prices up unnecessarily.
Harris has built her campaign around calls to grow and strengthen the nation's middle class — and suggested that rich Americans and large corporations should "pay their fair share" in higher taxes.
Both nominees are using the week before their debate to sharpen their economic messages about who could do more for the middle class. Trump will address the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
Biden, who built his campaign around promoting the middle class, won New Hampshire by 7 percentage points in 2020, but Trump came much closer to winning it against Hillary Clinton in 2016. 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 of the state's Democrats 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.
Despite that, New Hampshire pressed ahead with an unsanctioned primary. Though Biden didn't campaign in it, or appear on the ballot, he still easily won via a write-in drive.
Trump has seized on the primary calendar change, posting on his social media account 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."
"Additionally, the cost of living in New Hampshire is through the roof, their energy bills are some of highest in the country, and their housing market is the most unaffordable in history," the former president wrote. "I protected New Hampshire's First-In-The-Nation Primary and ALWAYS will."
___
This story has been corrected to reflect that Harris is heading back to Pittsburgh on Thursday, not Friday.