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When we spoke, Harris demonstrated a depth I didn’t expect – she geeked out over heat pumps, confessed her love of electric school buses and described the heavy burdens poorer communities face from air pollution. The more I learned about her background, the more I found a clear pattern: policy ideas that she championed became central to federal legislation. Our nation’s landmark climate law, which is turning two years old this month, has Harris’s signature all over it.
You can trace her influence by looking at her earliest days as a politician, then following the bills she sponsored as a senator, and finally examining her 2020 Presidential campaign platform. During the earliest days of the Biden-Harris administration, when the Build Back Better agenda was coming together, Harris made sure that her priorities stayed on the list: electric school buses, cleaner water and investments for communities.
While she hasn’t been given the credit, as vice-president, Harris has worked behind the scenes to champion her climate policies. And she’s managed to get a long list of her ideas signed into law.
Her work predates the Build Back Better proposal; it started with her early advocacy for a Green New Deal and her legislative involvement continued through casting the tiebreaking vote in the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act — literally using the one meaningful power the Vice President has to pass tiebreaking legislation.