The Kamala Harris campaign seized on a comment earlier this week from Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance deriding efforts to retool a Michigan auto plant as mere table scraps.

Apparently 650 families livelihood is just table scraps there, said Gene Sperling, an economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, in a video conference call with reporters on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Vance attacked a program that would spend $500 million to help overhaul a Lansing, Michigan, auto plant that used to produce Chevrolet Camaros so that it can instead build electric vehicles.

What weve said is that Kamala Harris is offering table scraps. Five-hundred million dollars when you have an EV mandate thats going to cost 117,000 autoworker jobs, Vance said, citing figures from a study by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank staffed by several prominent Trump administration alumni.

I think that Michigan autoworkers deserve more than the table scraps of Kamala Harriss Green New Deal, he added.

The $500 million grant would be part of a larger $1.7 billion program aimed at revamping 11 auto plants to make electric cars or components of them as part of the Joe Biden administrations effort to speed up the conversion of Americans internal combustion-powered cars to more efficient and reliable electric ones.

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, also criticized Vances remarks.

Its going to secure us 650 jobs, Fain said, citing a GM estimate that 650 jobs would be saved. Vance refuses to commit to the funding and what his offer would be to workers because their offer is nothing.