Fact-checking Harris’ CNN interview

By Daniel Dale, Tami Luhby and Ella Nilsen, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sat down with CNN anchor Dana Bash on Thursday for the first formal interview of their campaign.

Bash directed most of the questions to Harris. Here is a fact check of some of Harris’ responses, including a misleading statement and an exaggeration.

Harris’ stance on fracking

Bash noted that Harris said, while running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” When Bash asked if she still wants to ban fracking, Harris responded: “No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 – that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.”

When Bash again noted that Harris said in 2019 that she supported a ban on fracking, and asked Harris if she changed her mind during that campaign (which Harris ended in December 2019), Harris said, “In 2020, I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024 and I’ve not changed that position, nor will I going forward.”

Facts First: This is misleading. Harris did not make her position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence; Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate. Rather, she said that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would not ban fracking if he was elected president.

Harris said in the 2020 vice presidential debate: “Joe Biden will not end fracking”; “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”

It made sense that Harris was addressing Biden’s plans at the time given that the president sets administration policy. But contrary to her claim on Thursday, neither of these 2020 debate comments made clear that she personally held a different view on the subject than she had the year prior.

The child tax credit and poverty

Harris touted the impact of the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill Biden signed into law in 2021, which included a temporary enhancement of the child tax credit. She referred to “when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit, so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%.”

Facts First: The word “over,” which Harris said very quietly, makes this claim a slight exaggeration; the American Rescue Plan’s temporary expansion of the child tax credit helped reduce child poverty by 46%, by one key federal measure, between 2020 and 2021. In addition, it’s important to note that this steep improvement only lasted for the one year the temporary enhancement was in effect. The child poverty rate then spiked in 2022, the most recent year for which public data is currently available. 

The American Rescue Plan increased the size of the child tax credit to up to $3,600 – from $2,000 – for eligible families. The law also enabled many more low-income parents to claim the credit and distributed half of the credit on a monthly basis.

These changes helped send child poverty (as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure) to a record low 5.2% in 2021, a drop of 46% from 2020, when the rate was 9.7% according to the US Census Bureau. But in 2022, child poverty soared to 12.4%, roughly comparable to where it was prior to the pandemic in 2019. That was the largest jump in child poverty since the Supplemental Poverty Measure began.

Harris is now calling to restore the $3,600 credit as well as create a new $6,000 credit for newborns.

Clean energy jobs

Touting the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate law for which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, Harris spoke of “what we’ve already done, creating over 300,000 new clean energy jobs.”

Facts First: This needs context. While it’s clear that a significant number of new clean energy jobs were created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the “300,000” figure includes jobs that companies have promised to create but aren’t finalized. And other counts of new clean energy jobs have come up with smaller figures.

The 300,000 estimate comes from a June tally by communications group Climate Power. It was compiled by adding up the jobs promised by companies in publicly announcing 585 clean energy projects after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed through May 2024, a total of 312,900 announced jobs. Not all of these jobs have already been created. Climate Power’s topline number also doesn’t distinguish between construction jobs building new factories and the long-term jobs at those factories – jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, among other things.

In addition, E2, another clean energy group that tracks Inflation Reduction Act-related investments and jobs, has counted over 109,000 new clean energy jobs created or announced from August 2022 to May 2024 – significantly lower than the Climate Power number. A recent report from the US Department of Energy found 142,000 new clean energy jobs were created in 2023.

Different entities use different methodologies when analyzing data, so it is difficult to determine an exact figure. Regardless, there’s no question there’s a huge amount of clean energy investment, and a significant number of new jobs building EVs and renewables like wind and solar are being created by the Inflation Reduction Act. The 2024 Energy Department report showed clean energy jobs made up more than half of the total for new energy sector jobs and grew at a rate twice as large as the overall US economy.

The report also acknowledged how the sudden growth in the clean energy sector from the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs that are being created.

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