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WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used a campaign stop in New Hampshire 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 was 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.”
The vice president spoke at the Throwback Brewery in North Hampton, outside Portsmouth, and met 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.
After that, Harris visited another women-owned small business, Port City Pretzels, which was founded in 2015 and had expanded out of its original, 500-foot facility into a larger location. One of the co-owners, Suzanne Foley, led Harris around brown boxes bearing the company's logo, some stacked head-high and waiting to be shipped to customers around the country.
“Thank you for visiting our little company," said Foley, who beamed and chatted with Harris as the pair walked around the facility. At one point, the vice president asked of the pretzels “Is it a family recipe?” When the answer came back yes, she offered, “Is it a secret family recipe?" Foley responded, “It’s not really, no."
Meanwhile, the campaign of Donald Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee, dismissed Harris' 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 her small business plan, Harris addressed Wednesday's school shooting in Georgia.
“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.”
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 came after Harris marked Labor Day with rallies in Detroit and Pittsburgh and before she was making her 10th visit to Pennsylvania of the year by heading back to Pittsburgh on Thursday.
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 Biden on tax policy.
Still, Harris also endorsed during her Wisconsin speech a tax of 28% on long-term capital gains for households with an annual income of $1 million or more. That marks a key difference with Biden — who included a 39.6% rate in his proposed budget, while still calling for a higher rate.
“We will tax capital gains at a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators,” the vice president said.
The plans Harris presented has lots that the business community would like. But they also contrast with 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 higher taxes. She repeated that message Wednesday, saying “billionaires and big corporations must pay their fair share in taxes.”
“It's just not right that those who can most afford it are often paying a lower tax rate than our teachers and our nurses and our firefighters,” she told the New Hampshire crowd.
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. They square off on the debate stage next week in Philadelphia.
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.