Dems embrace Kamalanomics, Biden laments Milton misinfo, Senate GOP’s rosy poll numbers
From a recent proposal for Medicare to cover long-term home health care to plans to address the housing and child care crises, several Dems told me they’re in lock-step with Harris’s economic agenda.

👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill, my newsletter on the obvious and obscure ways Congress shapes how you work and live in the new economy. In this evening’s edition, details on how Hill Democrats have embraced Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic proposals, including her recent pitch for Medicare to cover home health care expenses, as they work to secure the congressional majorities to enact them.
Some dreary news for Dems on that front: New polling from The New York Times and Sienna College shows Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) trailing his Republican challenger in the deep-red state. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the other Democratic incumbent running in a state former President Donald Trump won in 2020 has a slight lead over his opponent. The Democratic candidates looking to flip Texas and Florida—Rep. Colin Allred and former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell—are trailing Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Rick Scott in the two most attainable pickup opportunities for the Blue Team.
Sticking with the Senate: In my weekly COURIER Newsroom column, I wrote about how former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s tenure on the executive committee of the Republican Governors Association helping to elect anti-abortion governors and the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’s received in contributions from anti-abortion Senate Republicans undercuts the moderate message he’s trying to offer on the issue as he attempts to catch up to Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks in the Maryland Senate race. Read the full piece here.
A quick note on Hurricane Milton before we get to the column:
President Joe Biden spoke this afternoon about the initial impacts of Hurricane Milton and the federal government’s ongoing response to the storm, which has killed at least 12 people—11 in the US and one in Mexico. Milton is tracking away from Florida, but high winds, flooding rain and storm surge continue. Three million people are without power.
Biden said that discussions were still underway on how much time Congress has to approve additional disaster aid before FEMA and the Small Business Administration runs out of money, adding that the latter agency would need its coffers replenished before the former. He said he hasn’t spoken to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who hasn’t indicated any intention to bring the House back into session before the election.
Biden added that the recovery would require several billion dollars and span several years, echoing a similar prediction from Secretary of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week. He also reiterated Vice President Harris’s warnings on Wednesday against price gouging for any individuals or companies taking advantage of people’s desperation to survive the storm.
He also continued his administration’s aggressive campaign against the disinformation trafficked by former President Trump and his supporters and amplified on X. He forcefully defended his administration against claims it isn’t providing all the necessary resources to rescue, recover and rebuild. (ICYMI: The White House launched a Reddit account to keep people informed regarding our ongoing response, recovery and preparedness efforts related to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The app has emerged as a search alternative to Google.)
“Those who engage in such lies are undermining confidence in the rescue and recovery work that’s opening and ongoing as I speak or continuing. These lies are also harmful to those who most need help,” Biden said. “Lives are on the line. People are in desperate situations. Have the decency to tell them the truth.”
Now back to Harris’s home health care proposal…
For all the rosy economic news on jobs (100,000 more were created in August than economists expected), the unemployment rate(down a tick from the month before), inflation (though above expectations, it’s the lowest it’s been since the pandemic despite stubbornly high food prices), a particular segment of the American population is especially feeling the pinch that comes from caring for both their children and aging parents.
These folks comprise what’s known as the sandwich generation. And earlier this week, Vice President Harris introduced a proposal on ABC’s The View for Medicare to cover home health care costs for older Americans.
The average cost of elder care—from nursing homes and assisted living to part-time or 24/7 in-home care—depends on variables such as where you live. But the National Council on Aging estimates that assisted living in the US costs around $4,500 per month or $54,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average US annual salary in Q4 of 2023 was $59,384.
“As women well know, care work is the bedrock of our families and the foundation of our society,” Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), chair of Elect Democratic Women, the campaign arm of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, told me in a statement. “By advocating for policies like this, we can help ensure families no longer have to face the impossible choice between caregiving and financial stability, fostering healthier and more resilient communities.”
The proposal is one of the latest of Harris’s economic policies that congressional Democrats have embraced on Capitol Hill. From $25,000 in downpayment assistance for first-time homeowners to investing in solutions to the affordable housing crisis to expanding tax deductions by ten-fold for new small businesses, members have told me in recent weeks that these ideas are popular not just with the American people but also within the party.
“We embrace it,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said last month when I asked members should be promoting Harris’s proposed economic agenda in their district during the October recess. “This needs to be a conversation about how we lead our country moving forward, and you do that by talking about policy that you can implement to make a difference in people’s lives.”
The California Democrat added that many of Harris’s policies are rooted in ideas House Democrats have led on in the past, which partly explains why there’s early buy-in among the members.
“We need to talk to the American public about what we have done,” Aguilar added. “But we need to talk aspirationally about what we want to accomplish if we’re given the opportunity to lead.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), who replaced Harris in the Senate when she was elected vice president, agreed that explaining the specifics of policy proposals is helpful to voters.
“Because it’s not just general promises of a president that’s going to help you and help working families,” he told me. “People do want to hear specifics, like when I have to pay the rent or the mortgage at the end of month, that’s pretty specific. When I see my grocery bill every week, that’s very specific. And so having a president speaking to those specifics, I think matters.”
Harris’s proposals aren’t just popular for members in safe seats. Rep. Jahana Hayes, who’s running for reelection in what’s considered a frontline district in Connecticut, said she speaks about them because the high costs of housing, child care or running a small business touch her constituents no matter their party affiliation.
“These are hyper-local, kitchen-table issues that help people really support and care for their families,” she told me. “So when I when I’m asked about it at home, I am very open about [my support for] these policies and I would do whatever I can to help make sure that we are working to implement policies that mirror these proposals or put forth these proposals because it would help working families to afford everyday costs that people are talking about every time we're out on the campaign trail.”
Suzan DelBene (D-WA), the chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm and a staunch advocate for restoring the expanded child tax credit on the House Ways and Means Committee, told me childhood poverty costs the country trillions of dollars.
“So when we talk about specific policies like that, we can talk about what we’re doing to build a strong future,” she said. “We can talk about fiscal responsibility and how these investments that we make give us an incredible return for our communities and for our country.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said his members would also lean into enhancing the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit as part of the caucus’s effort to lower costs and grow the middle class.
Several of the core provisions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire next year, including the state and local tax deduction, which was capped at $10,000 per year and has become a lightning rod for members who represent districts in states with high income and property taxes like New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois.
Trump posted on his social media app last month that he would end the cap without offering details.
“It’s interesting to me that Donald Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans in the House and the Senate imposed a draconian cap on the state and local tax deduction that has cost middle class Americans thousands of dollars in increased taxes and then turn around and want to pretend that after being the arsonist who burned down the state and local tax deduction, they’re the firefighters to rescue it,” Jeffries told me. “No one is buying at the extreme MAGA Republicans in the New York congressional delegation and the California congressional delegation who have done nothing about the extreme MAGA Republican-imposed state and local tax deduction cap are going to somehow rescue it. So that’s also going to be an issue that Democrats will work on in the next Congress.”
And finally, a few evening reads:
“Inside Trump’s push to win over the ‘bro’ vote” by Alex Isenstadt: “But can he get young men to vote?”
“November will be worse” by Elaine Godfrey: “Hurricane disinformation was just the start.”
“Fleeing a hurricane is expensive” by Heather Souvaine Horn: “People will be left behind as Florida evacuated for Hurricane Milton. Will their deaths count as “accidents?”
“Incarcerated people are uniquely vulnerable during natural disasters. Hurricane Milton made that clear” by Li Zhou: “Multiple Florida jails opted not to evacuate despite being in the storm’s direct trajectory.”
“No one wants to live near TikTokers” by Clio Chang: “From Dumbo to the West Village, brokers say hordes of content creators are giving clients cold feet.”
See you on Monday,
Michael