Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (left) and Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance (Ohio).
Getty Images
housing
In May 2023, Walz signed housing legislation that included $200 million in down payment assistance. The bill also allocates $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,” TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a July statement. “These are the housing ideas we expect from the Harris administration,” she wrote.
A demand-side approach to housing aims to assist individual households by improving the quality of housing or reducing monthly housing costs.
Vance is also a supporter of affordable housing, emphasizing the issue in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention and on the campaign trail.
“Before running for the Senate, Vance believed that one of the keys to solving poverty was to address affordable housing,” Seberg wrote, and he opposed institutional ownership of rental homes and Chinese buyers of U.S. real estate.
child tax credit
If Congress fails to act, Trillions of tax cuts enacted by Trump are set to expire after 2025, including the child tax credit, which will drop from $2,000 to $1,000 per child.
Congress approved a temporary expansion of the child tax credit in 2021 to include monthly advances, which reduced the child poverty rate to a historic low of 5.2% in 2021, according to a Columbia University analysis.
Consistent with federal policy, Minnesota enacted a refundable state child tax credit in 2023, which Walz called a “landmark achievement.”
Minnesota’s new child tax credit is narrow but among the most generous in the nation for low-income families.
Jared Walczak
Vice President of National Projects, Tax Foundation
“Minnesota’s new child tax credit is unusual in its narrow scope,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state programs at the Tax Foundation. “But it’s a major step across the country for low-income families. Most generous.”
However, making a permanent federal child tax credit expansion could be difficult, especially with 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, with Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, describing the vote as a “blatant attempt to score political points.”
Despite the procedural vote failure, Crapo said he was open to negotiating a “child tax credit solution that most Republicans can support.”
Democrats scheduled the vote in part as a response to Vance, who has positioned himself as a pro-family candidate. Vance was not present for the Senate vote but expressed support for the child tax credit.
Vance’s campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
student loans
Vance has spoken out against student loan forgiveness.
“Forgiving student debt is a huge windfall for wealthy, college-educated people, especially America’s corrupt college administrators,” said Vance, a Yale Law School graduate. Wrote April X, 2022.
The outstanding educational debt in the United States is approximately $1.6 trillion. Nearly 43 million people, or one in six U.S. adults, have student loans. Women and people of color bear the greatest debt burden.
Vance does appear to favor loan forgiveness in extreme circumstances. In May, he helped introduce legislation that would forgive parents’ student loan debt for children who are permanently disabled.
Jane Fox, president of the UAW local 2325 legal aid association’s bar union chapter, said Vance’s view of debt relief as a benefit for wealthy people is hypocritical and incorrect.
“Student debt relief is a working-class issue,” Fox said. “The 1% who get into elite institutions and then work at private equity firms like Senator Vance rarely need debt relief.”
Vance’s campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz said Walz, a former schoolteacher, supports plans to ease people’s student debt burdens.
Kantrowitz said he signed on to a student loan forgiveness program for nurse practitioners in Minnesota and a free tuition program for low-income students.
“As my daughter prepares to go to college next year, affordability and student loan debt are top of mind,” Walz wrote on Facebook in 2018. “Every Minnesotan should have access to a great education. , and will not be hindered by soaring housing prices.
