I Can't Figure Out Who Kamala Harris Is!

Who is Kamala Harris? What does she believe? It's hard to know because she won't take questions from reporters. Instead, she reads from a teleprompter and gives the same speech again and again. She's eager to spend other people's money.

As the Biden administration spent America further into debt, Vice President Harris cast tiebreaking votes to spend more. Last election, I compared the candidates' proposed spending. We were surprised that the biggest spending plans came from Harris.

Trump proposed spending $267 billion more. Biden, $297 billion. The socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders wanted to spend an astonishing $3.976 trillion! But Harris was even worse! $4.162 trillion in new spending. Biden's big spending ignited nasty inflation. Imagine how much prices would have increased had Democrats selected Harris back then.

Last week, in her first policy speech, she proposed $1.7 trillion in new spending. At least that's not as bad as what she wanted during COVID: She thought government should give every American $2,000 a month. That would have cost taxpayers $21 trillion! Her love for big government dominates her thinking. A few years ago, she endorsed eliminating private health insurance -- having government take it over completely. Now her campaign says she "no longer supports (entirely government-run) health care." Who is the real Kamala Harris? In 2019, she said she wanted to ban fracking. Now that Harris needs votes in Pennsylvania, where fracking provides jobs, her campaign claims she won't ban fracking, and Republican claims that she would are "false ... an obvious attempt to distract." But what's false? She told CNN, "I'm in favor of banning fracking." She also wanted to force gun owners to sell their guns to the government. Now, a Harris spokesperson says, "the vice president would no longer require this." She used to brag about being a tough prosecutor, even taking pride in "prosecuting parents for truancy." But then, when progressives criticized harsh policing, she flip-flopped. During the George Floyd riots, as people looted and set fires, Harris tweeted, "help post bail for those protesting." Now the policing pendulum has swung back. Harris again brags about locking people up.

During a Democratic presidential debate in 2019, former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pointed out her hypocrisy: "She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana." Harris had no answer. Shortly after that, she dropped out of the presidential race. Today, legacy media protect Harris, because they hate Trump so much. For years, the supposedly "non-partisan" website GovTrack ranked senators on a liberal/conservative scale. They labeled Harris the most liberal. But once it looked like Harris would be the nominee, Gov Track deleted their page. They suddenly decided they didn't have sufficient data "to create a reliable portrait of the activity of legislators."

Harris needs this media cover, because she says radical things, like wanting "equity" over equality and equal opportunity. "There's a big difference," she says in an animated video. "Equality suggests everyone should get the same amount. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place." Everyone must end up at the same place? So, we need even more government redistribution? Harris is a big-government, flip-flopping opportunist. It's upsetting that the main presidential contenders are a cackling, economically ignorant big spender and a crass, self-absorbed bully.

Even Trump supporter Ann Coulter calls him an "awful, awful man."

Although most of his policies would be better than hers ... The best news is that America's founders wisely created checks on executive power. Foolish people often say the president "runs the country." Thankfully, that's not true. We the people run the country. The president runs only one of three branches of government. Each is designed to be able to stop the other from imposing tyranny. The founders wanted limited government because they'd seen the damage oppressive rulers did. If our next president must be Trump or Harris, I'm sure glad there are limits on their power.

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Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom.