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CPAC Attacks Kamala Harris’s Tie-Breaking Senate Votes, “Politically Polarizing”

by in Daily Edition | July 31, 2024

VP Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson) The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As Vice President, Kamala Harris cast more tie-breaking votes in the narrowly divided Senate than any Vice President before her. Those 33 votes are the topic of a political ad running on X that attempts to portray what a “Kamala Harris Administration look(s) like” by claiming Harris’s deciding votes show her as “politically polarizing” and “show how damaging a Kamala Harris White House would be.”

The ad is run by CPAC, the influential right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference run by the American Conservative Union. But to judge from the most liked and surfaced comments on the ad, which has fewer than 1.5 million views despite being a paid placement, it has also served as a launching pad for Harris’s supporters to approve of her votes and positions.

[NOTE: The 117th Congress passed more than 360 bills, needing Harris’s vote for less than 10 percent of them.]

One commenter calls out the ad’s assertion that Harris is “polarizing,” noting that it is the Senate that is polarized — otherwise Harris wouldn’t be in a position to cast a deciding vote.

Another emphasized the story of GOP congress members and senators who took credit for federally funded initiatives in their districts using money from the same Biden legislation they voted against.

Others take the CPAC language about what a Harris administration would “look like” and answer hopefully that it would resemble the country’s makeup and character — “the most diverse and innovative country on earth.”

CPAC, in one of its own comments on its ad, writes that Harris’s deciding vote on one “party-line resolution gave congress the authority to rush through President Biden’s wasteful and inflationary $1.9 trillion spending plan” — asserting that the resulting deficit increase caused inflation. (A common argument against CPAC’s claim is that Inflation was generally higher and remained higher longer in other developed economies, which obviously did not pass this bill.)

CPAC further enumerated many of its own objections to Harris’s votes, most especially in cases where Harris cast the deciding vote on the nomination of a director of a federal office — especially if that director subsequently pursued policies attached to racial justice initiatives.

In one comment, CPAC alleges Harris should be held to account for voting to confirm NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who it alleges “allowed frivolous litigation against Whole Foods, claiming that workers have a right to pursue ‘racial justice advocacy’.” (See full CPAC claim below.)

CPAC also presents Harris’s tie-breaking vote to confirm CFPB director Rohit Chopra as an example of what a “Harris White House” might mean, including — not surprisingly — decisions that are potentially favorable to liberal economists like Sen. Elizabeth Warren. CPAC writes:

“On September 30, 2021, Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote to bring forward the nomination of Rohit Chopra as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Chopra’s confirmation was immediately praised by the most progressive members of the Senate like Elizabeth Warren.”