Kamala Harris’s change of heart on single health care, fracking and the Supreme Court.

At that time-Sen. Kamala Harris was running for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president with one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate, her longest running candidacy.

But now, less than five years later, as the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris is managing some of the more controversial policy positions.

With 80 days until Election Day, Harris may need independent voters to win a competitive race against former President Donald Trump in the general election this fall. He spent 3.5 years in the executive branch reviewing and revising some of his policy positions, and there were shifts.

“The position of vice president was established by three years of active administration as part of the Biden-Harris administration,” a Harris campaign adviser said. With less than a month to run for president, Harris and his advisers are working on the major positions and strategic plans he will unveil during the campaign.

Trump, who has shifted his policy positions over the years on issues such as abortion, voting by post moreover, he calls Harris a “chameleon.”

A month into his impromptu presidential campaign, Harris has so far offered nothing new in the way of policy. But he has changed his views on several issues since he first ran for president. A campaign spokesperson described Harris’ approach as “pragmatic,” comparing her to Trump’s “extreme thinking of him. Project 2025 program.”

“It is this approach that has made it possible for the Biden-Harris administration to achieve great success on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said. “As president, he will take the same pragmatic approach, focusing on common sense solutions for the sake of progress.”

Individual health care and “Medicare for all”

During his 2019 campaign, Harris’ position on the future of health insurance was at times confusing. Joe Biden’s campaign manager at the time, Kate Bedingfield, said of Harris that he had “a long and confusing way of expressing his views on health care in America.”

During the 2019 primary debate, Harris raised his hand when moderators asked voters whether they would drop health insurance. He quickly backtracked, saying no, he would not work to eliminate health insurance.

Earlier that year, in April 2019, Harris supported together Sen. Bill Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All”, which would have eliminated private health insurance and replaced it with a single, government-run insurance policy for all Americans.

Harris released a health care plan in 2019 that would have put the US on a path to government-sponsored health insurance for more than 10 years but would not have completely eliminated health insurance. beauty.

“We will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans as part of this system that adheres to Medicare’s strict cost and benefit requirements,” Harris said at the time. “Medicare will set the road rules for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurance companies will play by those rules, not the other way around.”

Harris will not push for individual health insurance as president, according to a campaign official.

The vice president plans to work to lower health care costs through other means, including administrative ones current efforts to get Medicare to negotiate with drug manufacturers to lower the cost of some drugs, the campaign official said. At a recent event in Atlanta, Harris vowed to “take on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug costs for all Americans,” and Mr. Biden and Harris announced Thursday that Medicare had reached agreements with manufacturers of drugs at a low price for 10 drugs selected for administration. first step of communication. These drugs are used to treat heart failure, inflammation of the blood vessels, diabetes, arthritis, Crohn’s disease and other diseases and conditions.

“Our plan will lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year,” Harris said.

Fracking

As a candidate in September 2019, Harris said during a CNN town hall that “there is no question that I am committed to anti-fraud.”

“And it starts with what we can do on Day One around the public lands, right?” he said at the time. “And now there has to be a law, but yes – and this is something that I took in California. I have a history of working on this issue…. We just have to accept that the residual effect of fracking very large in terms of impact on public health and safety.”

Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, the extraction of oil and natural gas from rocks by drilling and chemicals.

At a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, Trump said Harris is “against fracking, he’s against oil drilling” and will ban it.

But the Harris campaign is unclear where he stands now, pointing to his support for clean energy and the growth of energy jobs under the Biden administration.

“Vice President Harris was proud to cast a major vote on the largest investment ever to address the climate crisis and under the Biden-Harris administration, America is more energy secure than ever before. with the highest domestic energy production on record,” a campaign spokesman said. “…Vice President Harris is focused on a future where all Americans have clean air, clean water, and affordable, reliable energy while Trump’s propaganda is an obvious attempt to derail the plans of home of enriching oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”

The Biden administration has worked to make it more expensive for oil and gas companies to tap into public lands but has not stopped it. fracking on public lands.

The size of the Supreme Court

While running for president, Harris said he intends to push for an expansion of the Supreme Court. At a New Hampshire hearing in May 2019, Harris was asked how he felt about adding more judges to the nine-member court. He said he was “pleased to have that conversation.”

The Harris campaign hasn’t said much about where Harris stands now, other than a campaign official said he supports proposed reforms of the Supreme Court Mr. Biden announced last month.

Those changes included setting term limits for judges, requiring them to adhere to mandatory ethics rules and enacting a constitutional amendment that would reduce presidential immunity. The changes proposed by Mr. Biden did not include expanding the size of the court. All of these changes will require significant support from Congress.