Vice President Kamala Harris told supporters in
Nevada on Saturday she supported eliminating taxes on tips, taking a
similar position to her rival Donald Trump in an effort to win over
service workers, an important constituency in the state.
Harris and her Democratic running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz,
wrapped up a multi-day tour of battleground states on Saturday with
their stop in Nevada, a western state that could play a pivotal role in
the Nov. 5 presidential election.
"It is my promise to everyone here when I am president we will
continue to fight for working families, including to raise the minimum
wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,"
Harris said.
Harris said she would work to drive down consumer prices, vowing to
"take on big corporations that engage in illegal price-gouging" and
corporate landlords that unfairly raise rents on working families, as
well as going after big pharmaceutical companies to drive drug prices
lower.
Trump, who told a rally in Las Vegas in June that he would seek to
end taxation of income from tips, accused Harris of stealing his policy
proposal.
"Kamala Harris, whose 'Honeymoon' period is ENDING... just copied my
NO TAXES ON TIPS Policy," Trump said on his Truth Social app. "The
difference is, she won’t do it, she just wants it for Political
Purposes!"
A Harris campaign official said her proposal would require legislation to be passed by Congress.
"As president, she would work with Congress to craft a proposal that
comes with an income limit and with strict requirements to prevent hedge
fund managers and lawyers from structuring their compensation in ways
to try to take advantage of the policy," the official said.
Harris, who officially became the Democratic Party's presidential
nominee this week, has been campaigning with Walz in Wisconsin,
Michigan, and Arizona, all states that traditionally swing between
supporting Republicans and Democrats in presidential elections.
To become president, a candidate need not win the national popular
vote but must win 270 electoral votes. Each state has a number of
electoral votes based on its population, making the swing states
especially important.
After Nevada, Harris traveled to San Francisco in her home state of
California, where she is slated to attend a fundraiser on Sunday with
former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Nearly 700 people
are expected at that event, which is expected to raise more than $12
million, a campaign official said.
Harris and Walz, whose selection she announced in Pennsylvania -
another swing state - on Tuesday, are seeking to maintain and build on
the momentum that she has generated since President Joe Biden stepped
aside as the party's standard-bearer last month.
Harris was leading Trump, the Republican former president, by four
percentage points each in separate polls conducted in Wisconsin,
Michigan and Pennsylvania, another swing state, by the New York Times
and Siena College, a marked difference from polls taken before Biden
quit the presidential race.
The Trump campaign released a memo from its chief pollster, Tony
Fabrizio, pushing back against the poll's results. "Once again, we see a
series of public surveys released with the clear intent and purpose of
depressing support for President Trump," Fabrizio said.
Nationally, Harris was ahead of Trump by five percentage points, 42%
to 37%, in an Ipsos poll published on Thursday, wider her lead from a
July 22-23 Reuters/Ipsos survey, which found her up 37% to 34%.
Harris has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and held rallies
with thousands of supporters since becoming the Democratic candidate,
regularly eclipsing the smaller events that Biden held and drawing ire
from Trump, to whom crowd size has always been an important barometer of
political strength.
The Harris campaign said more than 12,000 people were in the arena in
Las Vegas on Saturday and police had turned away roughly 4,000 more
because people in line were becoming ill in the Nevada heat.
Temperatures reached 109 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) on
Saturday.
