Oct. 22 (UPI) — Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the Bronx on Friday to push President Joe Biden’s social spending and infrastructure plans as Democratic lawmakers hashed out a price tag in Washington.
She, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to an audience at the Northeast Bronx YMCA in Edenwald about the Build Back Better Agenda and the bipartisan Infrastructure Deal.
Harris told attendees at the Bronx event that they’d benefit from the Child Tax Credit and expanded Earned-income Tax Credit included in the Build Back Better plan, according to amNY.
“We know that the families that have the least were being harmed the most,” she said. “Working-class families, middle-class families who were struggling before are barely holding it together now.”
A heckler interrupted Harris during her speech to protest infrastructure he said could have helped the people who drowned in basement apartments in Queens during Hurricane Ida. Guards escorted the man out of the audience, WABC-TV in New York City reported.
“You are right, brother,” Harris said. “You and I will talk after I give my comments and I am happy to talk with you. But right now let’s talk about the agenda that will include speaking to all people and allowing everybody to be heard, because that’s part of what we want in our democracy. Everybody gets a chance to talk and everybody gets a chance to be heard.”
Lawmakers in the U.S. House are currently negotiating with Biden’s White House on a social spending plan they can all get behind. Originally intended to have a price tag of about $3.5 trillion, moderate Democrats have balked at the spending and have whittled it down to between $1.75 trillion to $1.9 trillion.
Ocasio-Cortez encouraged her constituents to reach out to her on what they want included or cut from the expansive spending package.
“We want to fight for more because it’s very deeply shameful how 60-plus percent of the entire country is in agreement with these policies and yet the influence of dark money is preventing the majority of the opinion from happening,” she said. “We’ve got the work here in the Bronx right now and it’s a deeply impacted community.”
