In a new op-ed, former Senate chief of staff and senior CFPB official Dan Geldon makes the case that Vice President Harris should ignore the billionaires, keep Lina Khan on as FTC Chair and continue the Biden-Harris administration’s strong approach to corporate enforcement. These are the top five reasons:
BUILDS ON HER LEGACY: “Harris’s message reflects a record she has built over years in public life. While serving as California’s attorney general, she took on the big banks and won $20 billion in relief for consumers who had lost big in the 2008 mortgage meltdown. She took on the pharmaceutical industry for artificially inflating drug prices and deceptive marketing. And she challenged proposed mergers in the drug and hospital industry to lower costs for consumers.”
UNITES DEMOCRATS: “Khan is backed not just by progressive senators like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren but by House power brokers like Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.); by swing-state moderates like Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.); and by prominent party allies ranging from the NAACP to the AFL-CIO.”
DRIVES THE CONTRAST: “Republicans and independents, meanwhile, have long heard Biden, Harris and other Democrats attack Donald Trump for politicizing federal enforcement and promise not to do the same. In their 2024 convention platform, the Democrats warned that Trump would inappropriately ‘exert presidential authority over what have long been independent agencies.’”
SHOWS SMART LEADERSHIP: “Presidents don’t always get dealt the hand they want when they assume office, but they must play the hand they have. If Kamala Harris wants to maintain her brand as a strong leader who is unafraid to take on powerful interests — and, more importantly, if she wants to act as one — she should lean into the Biden-era enforcement apparatus, not retreat from it.”
THE PUBLIC APPROVES: “Preserving the Biden administration’s turn toward aggressive enforcement would be popular across the Democratic coalition — and could, in fact, help keep that coalition intact … September polling of Democrats from the Tech Oversight Project shows that 80 percent think the government should be doing even more to take on corporate monopoly power, and 88 percent support (FTC Chair Lina Khan’s) leadership.”