Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (L), and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
Getty Images
house
In May 2023, Walz signed a House bill that included $200 million in down payment assistance. The bill also has $200 million for housing infrastructure and $40 million for workforce housing.
“We expect Walz to be an advocate for a demand-side approach to housing,” wrote Jaret Seiberg, an analyst at TD Cowen in a July statement. “These are the kinds of housing ideas we would expect in a Harris administration,” he wrote.
The demand-side approach to housing aims to help individual households by improving housing quality or reducing monthly housing costs.
Meanwhile, Vance, who is also an advocate of affordable housing, highlighted the issue in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention and on the campaign trail.
“Prior to his Senate term, Vance said one of the keys to addressing poverty was to address affordable housing,” and he opposed institutional ownership of rental housing and Chinese buyers of U.S. real estate, Seiberg wrote.
Child tax credit
Without action from Congress, Trillions in tax breaks passed by Trump are slated to expire after 2025, including the child tax credit, which will drop from $2,000 to $1,000 per child.
Congress in 2021 approved a temporary expansion of the child tax credit, including monthly payments, which reduced the child poverty rate to 5.2% in 2021, according to a Columbia University analysis.
Following federal policy, Minnesota implemented a refundable state-level child tax credit in 2023, which Walz described as a “signature achievement.”
Minnesota’s new child tax credit is unusual in its narrowness, but the most generous in the state for low-income households.
Jared Walczak
Vice president of country projects at the Tax Foundation
“Minnesota’s new child tax credit is unusual because it’s so narrow,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation. “But it’s the most generous in the country for low-income households.”
However, expanding the permanent federal child tax credit could be difficult, especially in a divided Congress and growing concerns about the federal budget deficit.
Walz’s campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Senate Republicans blocked an expansion of the federal child tax credit last week, and Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, described the vote as “a blatant attempt to score political points.”
Despite the failed procedural vote, Crapo voiced his openness to discuss “a child tax credit solution that the majority of Republicans can support.”
Democrats are scheduled to vote in part in response to Vance, who has been a pro-family candidate. Vance was not present for the Senate vote, but has expressed support for the child tax credit.
Vance’s campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Student loans
Vance has talked about the student loan forgiveness policy.
“Student loan forgiveness is a boon for the rich, for the college-educated, and most importantly for corrupt American university administrators,” said Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School. write at X in April 2022. “Republicans must fight this with every ounce of our energy and might.”
Outstanding education debt in the US is estimated at $1.6 trillion. Nearly 43 million people – or 1 in 6 American adults – carry student loans. Women and people of color are burdened the most with debt.
Vance seems to approve of debt forgiveness in extreme cases. In May, he helped introduce legislation that would free parents from student loans taken out for children with permanent disabilities.
Jane Fox, chapter president of the Legal Aid Society attorneys union, UAW local 2325, said it was hypocritical and wrong for Vance to frame debt relief as a benefit to the wealthy.
“Student loan forgiveness is a working-class issue,” Fox said. “The people in the 1% who go to elite institutions and then work in private equity because Senator Vance rarely need a loan.”
Vance’s campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, Walz, a former school teacher, has supported programs to ease the burden of student debt on people, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
They signed a student loan forgiveness program for nurses to become law in Minnesota, Kantrowitz said, as well as a free tuition initiative for low-income students.
“As my son prepares for college next year, affordability and student loan debt are at the forefront of our minds,” Walz wrote on Facebook in 2018. student loan costs and debt.”