✂️ Dueling tax-cut promises by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have made the 2024 campaign a season of giving, with each candidate trying to make Election Day feel like Christmas morning.

Why it matters: If you're an investor, a hospitality worker, a retiree, a parent with young children, or a corporation or small business, at least one presidential candidate has a little something — or a big something — for you.

• Neither campaign is paying much heed to how much all these proposals could cost, but both would add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
• Trump's plans would cost two to four times as much as Harris' over 10 years.

🖊️ That means both candidates almost certainly want to write checks that Congress won't cash.

Harris has paired her promise of higher taxes for those making more than $400,000 annually with tax cuts for the middle class.

1. For families with young children, Harris wants an expanded child tax credit that would be worth up to $6,000 per child each year. (Cost: $1.2 trillion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.)

2. For first-time homebuyers, she's promising a $25,000 tax credit, a substantial increase on President Biden's $10,000 offer. (Cost: $100 billion.)

3. For small business start-ups, she's proposed a ten-fold increase in the deduction they can claim, from $5,000 to $50,000. (Cost: unknown.)

4. On capital gains she's breaking with Biden, calling for a 28% tax rate, much lower than Biden's 39.6% proposal. The current rate is 20%. (The Harris plan would raise $190 billion less than Biden's.)

Trump wants a series of sweeping tax cuts, as well as targeted ones.

1. He'd extend his 2017 individual tax cuts (Cost: $3.3 trillion to $4 .6 trillion.)

2. He wants to eliminate the taxes seniors pay on Social Security benefits. (Cost: $1.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion.)

3. He's seeking to lower the corporate rate from 21% to 15%. (Cost: $600 billion.)

4. No taxes on tips. (Cost: $250 billion; Harris has proposed a similar plan.)

Go deeper.

⚡️ The White House is plotting with Democratic leaders in Congress to try to force Republicans to accept a short-term spending bill that would fund the government through mid-December, Axios has learned.

The Biden administration's embrace of a three-month stopgap is an attempt to set the terms of the spending debate with House Republicans, who want a six-month bill.

• If Congress and the White House can't agree on a funding plan by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, the federal government will shut down in early October, weeks before Election Day.
• The December timeline Democrats want would require a lame duck session when lawmakers — and the next president — would know who was going to control what branches of government starting in January.
• The new Congress begins Jan. 3. The new president will be sworn in Jan. 20.

Driving the news: White House officials spoke separately with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) last week to agree on a strategy, according to people familiar with the matter.

• On the calls from the White House's team were Jeff Zients, chief of staff; Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president; Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Shuwanza Goff, director of legislative affairs.
• Speaker Mike Johnson told fellow Republicans last week to prepare to vote for his six-month plan this week.
• His wants to include a measure requiring voters to offer proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.

Go deeper.

Eight weeks before the Nov. 5 election — and before the expected late rush of ad spending on the 2024 presidential race — total spending by the campaigns, PACs, issue-oriented groups and committees backing candidates is on pace to top that of the 2020 cycle.

We didn't need more proof of the high stakes surrounding Tuesday's debate between Harris and Trump, but this weekend provided it anyway.

• 🏀 Harris' convention bounce has eased and Trump — despite a series of erratic and incendiary remarks and posts on social media — is maintaining steady support.
• The two are in a dead heat, according to a New York Times/Siena poll out today that indicates many voters (28%) want to know more about Harris' policy positions.

📈 The poll also found that while Harris leads Trump among traditional Democratic blocs such as Black and Hispanic voters, she's short of hitting the numbers that Democrats traditionally need to win.

• The poll showed Harris getting 55% of the Hispanic vote and 78% of Blacks' support in a head-to-head matchup with Trump.
• 🤔 As Axios' Russell Contreras has reported, when Democratic presidential candidates get less than about 64% of the Latino vote, they typically lose.
• The poll also suggests Harris has ground to make up to hit Democrats' traditional numbers among Black voters: More than 90% backed Biden in 2020.

The NYT/Siena poll showed Trump up 48-47 among likely voters, well within the margin of error. Harris has had a slight edge in other recent polls.

• 🇺🇸 But remember: The presidential race isn't a national election. It's a series of state elections that feed into a national count of votes in the Electoral College. Get 270 electoral votes, you win.
• That's why the polls in politically divided swing states are watched closely.
• NYT/Siena showed Harris with razor-thin leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the "Blue Wall" swing states crucial to her path to victory.

😡 Trump, meanwhile, ramped up his vows to get revenge on his political enemies in a post on his Truth Social platform late Saturday.

• He's proposing two of the largest-ever federal arrests of people living in America, including U.S. citizens, if he's re-elected.