Vice President Kamala Harris detailed her domestic policy agenda in a Thursday speech to teachers – saying she would focus on boosting the social safety net and maintaining outgoing President Biden’s push for greater union sway.
“In our vision of the future, we see a place where every person has the opportunity – not just to get by, but to get ahead – a future where no child has to grow up in poverty, where every senior can retire with dignity, and where every worker has the freedom to join a union,” Harris said.
The 59-year-old presidential candidate addressed thousands of American Federation of Teachers members in Houston, Texas, following an introduction by the union’s president Randi Weingarten, who has long been a powerful adviser to Democratic officeholders on legislation and executive policy.
“We see a future with affordable health care, affordable child care and paid leave – not for some, but for all,” Harris said. “We see a future where every student has the support and the resources they need to thrive, and a future where no teacher has to struggle with the burden of student loan debt.”
Harris, who swiftly became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after Biden backed out of the race and endorsed her on Sunday, didn’t unveil any specific new policies in the address, but particularly emphasized social programs.
America’s first female vice president vowed to ensure that children have access to free preschool and to guard the provisions of the 2014 Affordable Care Act – commonly known as Obamacare – including its restriction on insurance companies’ ability to discriminate agains people with preexisting conditions.
If elected, Harris vowed to continue Biden’s push to pass the PRO Act, which would strengthen labor unions, and to enact “common sense gun safety laws” and to “ban assault weapons.”
She also said she would work to battle state laws that Democrats say restrict voting rights and to ensure students learn the “true and full history” of the country – an apparent reference to Republican-led state bans on the teaching of so-called Critical Race Theory, which focuses on race as the central prism to analyze historical developments.
She also said she would speak out against “don’t say gay laws” in Republican-led states such as Florida, which restrict teachers from discussing LGBT issues.
“In 2004 on Valentine’s Day weekend, I was one of the first elected officials in the country to perform same sex marriages,” said Harris, who was San Francisco district attorney when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed about 4,000 same-sex couples to wed despite the lack of state law allowing for it.
“It pains me so to think 20 years later that there are some young teachers in their 20s who are afraid to put up a photograph of themselves and their partner for fear they could lose their job,” she said.
Harris’ long record of support for same-sex unions represents a generational break from Biden, 81, who as a senator in 1996 voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred federal recognition of marriages between gays and lesbians and allowed states to refuse valid marriage licenses from other jurisdictions. Biden dropped his opposition to same-sex marriage in 2012.
Harris also made brief mention of her plans to restore federal abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion policy to the states.
“We who believe in reproductive freedom will restore the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government telling her what to do,” she said.
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