In recent weeks, Vice President Harris has traveled to high school gymnasiums and packed arenas to outline her economic vision for America. While the Biden-Harris administration has made historic investments in clean energy jobs and cutting-edge manufacturing, it is clear to me that Harris’ most recent proposals share the fundamentals of America’s most foundational economic achievements, from the New Deal to the G.I. Bill. In the final stretch of her campaign, Kamala Harris is delivering a proven playbook to make our economy work for everyone. I know because I’ve lived it.
The son of a World War II combat veteran and a public school teacher, I grew up on a 200-acre chicken and hog farm in East Berlin, Pennsylvania. We were fortunate to never go hungry, but my parents always struggled to get by, let alone get ahead. For years, my father suffered from debilitating alcoholism, eventually losing our farm and home to bankruptcy. With four younger siblings, I decided to take out student loans and learn the skills I needed to support them.
One year later, while attending the Wharton School of Business, I started my own business: a beer warehouse on 29th Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As my brother and I constructed checkouts and coolers with cheap plywood and paint, we reaped the benefits of small business loans and tax credits—lifelines for first-time business owners like us.
In the years that followed, we were empowered by those tools to grow from one corner store to two, expand to another town then to another state, creating hundreds and later thousands of jobs in the process. But my story is not one in a million—it is one of the millions. According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses have created 66% of employment growth in the U.S. over the past 25 years and contribute nearly half of the GDP. By lowering the barrier to entry for small business loans, especially for historically underserved communities, and bolstering financial incentives for companies generating good-paying jobs, America’s Main Streets will thrive. We have history to prove it.
As our company grew over the years, so did our tax rate. But let me assure you: the corporate tax rate was never a factor in whether or not I built a new store or negotiated lower prices for my customers—and we always paid what we owed. Today, Trump’s tax cuts have permitted America’s richest corporations to pay less in federal taxes than our teachers and firefighters. According to a 2021 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, at least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States.
