If You Live in Georgia, Here’s How Kamala Harris Might Affect Your Wallet
Written by
Andrew Lisa
Edited by
Gary Dudak
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With America’s Electoral College system, most modern presidential contests come down to five-figure vote tallies in a half-dozen or so crucial “swing” states. Anyone doubting the outsized attention that swing-state voters receive has not endured the bombardment of political ads that dominate their television screens during campaign season.
Perhaps nowhere is the battle for every vote waged more ferociously than in the swing state of Georgia.
In 2020, President Biden defeated Donald Trump in the Peach State by fewer than 12,000 votes. The former president’s alleged actions in response to the razor-thin decision led prosecutors to charge Trump with conspiring to unlawfully change the outcome of the presidential election in Georgia.
The state provided a crucial win for Biden’s national victory, and if Vice President Kamala Harris can repeat her current boss’s success in Georgia in November, she’ll expand her paths to victory on a much more forgiving electoral map while choking off Trump’s avenues to the White House.
If she pulls it off, here’s how a Harris presidency could impact the finances of the 10.9 million Americans who call Georgia home.
Struggling Georgia Homebuyers Could Get a 5-Figure Boost
Vice President Harris has unveiled a sweeping economic plan that U.S. News and World Report calls an “ambitious populist agenda focused on reducing costs for working people and building up the middle class.”
The agenda includes a $25,000 incentive for first-time homebuyers, which would be welcome news for many aspiring buyers in a state where homeownership is increasingly out of reach.
In August, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that rents were soaring across Georgia, making it hard for renters to keep up with their leases — but that “owning a home is even harder.”
In Metro Atlanta, the median home price is $415,000. Presuming a 7% mortgage loan, principal and interest alone — not including property taxes, insurance and home repairs — would be about $2,200 a month. That’s after a 20% down payment of $83,000.
In a state where half of all renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, many first-time buyers can’t save enough for a down payment, no matter how hard they try.
Harris’s plan would give up to $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers who have paid their rent on time for two years, with more generous assistance proposed for “first-generation” homebuyers whose parents didn’t own homes. The Biden-Harris administration proposed giving $25,000 to 400,000 first-generation homeowners on top of a proposed $10,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.
New Tax Credit Would Give $6K to Families With Newborns
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2024 Kids Count Data Book, Georgia ranks a dismal 37th in the country in terms of overall family and child well-being. Child poverty, low birth weight, high teen death rates, chronic absenteeism, undereducation and household underemployment and unemployment plague much of the state. Georgia ranks among the bottom 10 states for child health and family and community issues.
Harris has proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit to give a $6,000 credit to families with newborns, which she says could pull millions of children out of poverty. According to the United Health Foundation, Georgia is among the bottom eight states in America, with 20.2% of its children living in poverty. Comparatively, the national childhood poverty rate is 16.9%.
1 Million Diabetics in Georgia Could Save Hundreds on Insulin
According to the American Diabetes Association, Georgia is home to more than 1.02 million of the 38 million Americans living with diabetes. Over 12% of the state’s adult population has been diagnosed as diabetic.
President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act capped the monthly cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare at $35 per month. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 45,625 Georgia seniors have saved more than $21.76 million, or $477 in average out-of-pocket expenses per enrollee.
That leaves nearly a million diabetics in Georgia who don’t qualify for the price cap — but Harris wants to change that.
On her campaign website, Harris vows to “build on the Biden-Harris Administration’s successes in bringing down the cost of lifesaving prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries by extending the $35 cap on insulin and $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket spending for seniors to all Americans.”
Editor’s note on election coverage: GOBankingRates is nonpartisan and strives to cover all aspects of the economy objectively and present balanced reports on politically focused finance stories. You can find more coverage of this topic on GOBankingRates.com.
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