McCAUGHEY: Harris’ approach: Only Blacks get government help

Published Oct 19, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks to the press before a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 18, 2024. Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI /AFP via Getty Images

United States Vice-President Kamala Harris is rushing to fix a growing hole in her support: Black men. She’s buying votes with thinly veiled, taxpayer-funded giveaways. Your tax dollars will pay for “fully forgivable” $20,000 loans for businesses.

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And worse, she’s targeting Black men with these giveaways, as if no one else deserves to participate in her “opportunity economy.”

If you’re having trouble growing your business, and you’re white — male or female — will you be eligible? Sounds unlikely. That’s blatant discrimination, immoral and unconstitutional.

Yet not a murmur of criticism from the liberal press.

On Monday, Harris travelled to Erie County, Pennsylvania, stopping at a local Black-owned coffee shop. Her campaign announced that she’s unleashing “the untapped ambition” within the Black community.

She’s promising one million loans, up to $20,000 each, “fully forgivable” to “Black entrepreneurs and others who have historically faced barriers to starting a new business or growing an existing business.”

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According to her campaign, these loans “can help entrepreneurs rent office space and industry-standard software … purchase a van for a catering business … buy professional hairstyling equipment and chair space for a barber shop, buy lawn mowers and tools for a landscaper, and more.”

Who’s to say Black men should get this help any more than white men, women, Asians, Hispanics and people of all types who have “untapped ambition” and want to start or build businesses? That’s the American dream.

What’s un-American and contrary to the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment is offering help to people based on their skin colour or ethnicity.

“Fully forgivable,” in plain English, means these are giveaways. Vote buying — using taxpayer dollars.

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Harris is also announcing her plans for federal grants to support “leadership training and mentorship” within public schools for “young Black men.”  This, too, is illegal and immoral. All students should have access to these programs.

Every parent wants to know their kids won’t face discrimination at school.

Harris has a long track record of discriminating based on race and denying benefits or programs to people based solely on their whiteness.

On Sept. 9, she announced her plan to provide “first-time homebuyers with $25,000 to cover the down payment.” But the devil is in the details.

Her campaign website explains that “first-generation” homebuyers — buyers whose parents never owned a home — will get “more generous support.” That ensures minority homebuyers get the lion’s share of the help. Black buyers are nearly twice as likely as white buyers to qualify with this restriction.

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Of course, no president can offer $25,000 to homebuyers. Only Congress, which controls the nation’s purse strings, can do that.

The Downpayment Toward Equity Act, the legislation backed by Harris-Biden and sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) spells out who gets what. The bill provides $20,000 for down payment help but increases it to $25,000 if the buyer is from a “socially and economically disadvantaged group,” defined as being “Black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian American.” Sorry, no whites are eligible for the added help.

It’s shocking that members of Congress would even write such a provision — a blatant violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment for all.

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Harris has made equity the theme of her politics for years. When she ran for president in 2019, an election ad on her Facebook page depicted a Black man who needed a physical boost to climb a mountain alongside a white man. “Equality means we should all be treated the same,” Harris explained in a voiceover. “The problem with that — not everybody’s starting in the same place.”  Equity, she said, means “we all end up in the same place”

The Biden-Harris administration’s first piece of legislation, the American Rescue Act, gave debt relief to “socially disadvantaged farmers,” based solely on race and ethnicity. White farmers were ineligible.

Similarly, the act granted restaurant owners affected by COVID-19 aid, but white male restaurant owners were ineligible to apply during the program’s first three weeks, to ensure the money went first to other groups.

Federal judges struck down these provisions, but Harris continues to take this discriminatory approach.

Americans beware. When Harris says her values haven’t changed, believe her. She would be the “equity president.”

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York

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