OPINION | Kamala Harris Cribbed Trump’s Policy for Taxing Tips. So What?
Policy proposals have always been in the public domain
I had a fiancee decades ago who liked to say, “Even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then.”
It was her very folksy way of saying that even an idiot can be right once in a while.
So, when Donald Trump proposed eliminating the taxation of tips for service and hospitality workers, I immediately thought of my ex and her quaint saying.
But I would never support regardless of a unique and welcome gesture towards winning working-class votes.
Which made me all the more happy when Vice President Kamala Harris made the same proposal just the other day in Las Vegas, Nev.
However, Trump’s Republican allies jumped all over that and accused Harris of “plagiarizing” Trump’s policy ideas.
Folks over on Fox News went into overdrive attacking her for it — even trying to dub her “Copycat Kamala.”
First of all, though, Harris didn’t just steal Trump’s idea, because she’s pairing it with what would be the first increase in the federal minimum wage in 15 years.
So what Harris actually did there is take Trump’s idea and immediately improve upon it.
The federal minimum wage remains stagnant at a paltry $7.25 per hour, which ought to be a crime against working Americans.
And who honestly believes Trump ever would show any interest in pushing through a minimum wage increase?
But, to the extent that Harris appropriated her opponent’s policy, I say, “So what??”
Political ideas and economic policies aren’t under copyright; they’re fully in the public domain.
Republicans ought to know that but seem to have exceptionally short memories.
President Bill Clinton regularly frustrated Republicans in the ’90s by taking their ideas as his own.
Consider this report (paywall) from The Wall Street Journal, back in 1996:
Republicans figured the deck would be stacked in their favor on many of the hot-button social issues in this year's presidential campaign. But to the GOP's dismay, President Clinton is stealing their trump cards.
On Saturday, Mr. Clinton issued an executive order forcing states to end welfare payments to teenage mothers who quit school or move out of their homes. On Sunday, the president kept moving to the right, as he sent a letter to Congress endorsing Republican legislation granting a $5,000 tax credit to many families that adopt children and penalizing states that delay adoptions to find parents of the same race as the child.
While Republicans have this history of Democrats commandeering a policy or two, they haven't whined about it like children. Until now.
And I don’t often agree with Nikki Haley, the Republican who ran against Trump in the presidential primaries — before collapsing and backing his election.
But in this case I do.
She was on Fox News the other day and told Trump and other Republicans to “quit whining.”
Of course, they absolutely should. But they won’t.
Hopefully, the Trump/Vance ticket will go down to defeat in November and be consigned to the dustbin of history.
But, in the process, Harris will have saved that one acorn that Trump and his other blind pigs were able to come up with.
Please support our work…
Please subscribe…