WASHINGTON – President Elect Joe Biden’s early days will be dominated by the crisis: the coronavirus pandemic and the economic emergency it caused, as well as the aftermath of the Capitol’s deadly riot when his predecessor faces an impeachment trial in the Senate.
Biden frequently talks about the need to use the first 100 days, which have normally been a honeymoon period for new presidents, to make significant progress on the challenges the country faces, but the inability to find bipartisan cooperation can hurt him sooner. to take the office oath.
Biden said last week that the country is in a “crisis of profound human suffering in plain sight” when it outlined a $ 1.9 trillion funding bill that asked Congress to pass quickly.
The Senate already has a busy schedule. Lawmakers will have to find time to debate a funding bill, confirm Biden’s cabinet nominees and deal with the impeachment article passed last week in the House. The trial can start as early as the inauguration day.
This is not how Biden imagined his first days in office would be a year ago, when he was fighting for the Democratic nomination. At that time, he talked about how the focus of his first 100 days would be reforming immigration policy, rebuilding alliances abroad and combating climate change.
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But any major initiatives will have to be suspended; more than 400,000 people in the U.S. have died of coronavirus, with nearly 11 million Americans receiving unemployment insurance.
Here is an analysis of how Biden plans to solve these problems from day one.
Coronavirus
Biden has pledged to oversee the administration of 100 million Covid-19 vaccines in his first 100 days in office, which transition officials say is still an achievable goal, although the vaccine launch promised by the Trump administration was much more slow than expected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 11.1 million doses were administered by Thursday.
The Trump administration has left distribution to the states, but Biden plans to expand the role of the federal government. Biden’s team plans to create federal sites for mass distribution, along with mobile vaccination centers for people in rural areas.
The supply of vaccines, components and materials will also be a problem, and transition officials said Biden plans to use the Defense Authorization Act to speed up production.
But Biden says he needs money from Congress to achieve his vaccination goal. He asked for more than $ 400 billion to be used in vaccines, slowing the spread of the virus and reopening schools.
The plan includes $ 20 billion for a national vaccination program, $ 50 billion for testing and contact tracking, and $ 30 billion for supplies and protective equipment. He is also looking for money to provide paid sick leave to encourage people to stay home if they are feeling ill, and has asked to hire 100,000 public health professionals, almost three times the current number.
economy
Biden will inherit an economy unable to recover from the pandemic, with an unemployment rate that has been stagnating at close to 7% for months.
Biden wants Congress to approve another $ 1 trillion Covid-19 aid package, calling previous efforts “entry”.
Biden’s plan includes $ 1,400 per person in direct payments and a $ 400 federal unemployment insurance program per week. He is also asking for billions of dollars for federal nutrition programs and childcare providers and an increase in the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour. In addition, he is asking $ 350 billion for states and $ 35 billion more for small business finance programs.
He will need the support of Congress, which controls the federal budget.
“A new president with a legislative agenda tends to be more effective in his first year, because the other party has historically left the president a little more space to approve his priorities,” said Casey Dominguez, professor of political science at the University of San Diego, who wrote about the 100-day honeymoon that new presidents often enjoy with Congress.
Democrats will control the Senate, but by a very tenuous margin, and the House. It is unclear whether Biden will be able to enjoy a honeymoon period due to party polarization, Dominguez said.
A transition official said last week that members of the new government have been looking to lawmakers and expect Congress to act quickly to approve a stimulus bill. But Biden’s team withdrew from an earlier requirement that Congress send him a bill to sign by the end of January, and now says he expects the legislation to be introduced in February.
Executive actions of the first day
While broad immigration reform and climate plans may no longer top the task list, Biden has vowed to reverse some of Trump’s most controversial policies.
Many Trump policies, such as climate deregulation, have been enacted through executive orders or as informal guidance, not through Congressional legislation, which means that Biden can reverse them quite easily.
New White House chief of staff Ron Klain said that on inauguration day, Biden “will sign about a dozen actions to combat the four crises” – Covid-19, economy, climate change and racial inequality.
Day One actions will include asking the Department of Education to extend the pause on student loan and interest payments, resuming the Paris Agreement on climate change, reversing the “ban” on traveling from several Muslim-majority countries, issuing a mandate wearing federally owned masks and during interstate travel, and extending nationwide restrictions on evictions and foreclosures.
On the second day, Klain said, Biden “will sign a series of executive actions to act aggressively to change the course of the Covid-19 crisis and reopen schools and businesses safely, including actions to mitigate the spread by expanding testing and protection workers and establish clear public health standards. “
Other executive actions that Biden plans shortly after taking office include terminating the license for the Keystone XL pipeline, ending Trump’s national emergency declaration on the southern border, stopping federal executions and reversing the ban on transsexuals serving in the military, said one person alongside plans.
He must also establish new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he promised to sign an executive order stating that any member of his government would be fired if he were discovered trying to influence a Justice Department investigation, as Trump was accused of doing.
Immigration
Biden is expected to propose a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for the approximately 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal personality.
The project would provide an eight-year path to citizenship for immigrants and a fast path for people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, said an immigration advocate informed about the plan.
Klain said on Saturday in a memo to new members of the White House team that Biden will send an immigration bill to Congress “on his first day in office,” but did not provide details.
If passed, Biden’s bill would be the biggest move to grant legal status to undocumented people in the country since President Ronald Reagan did so to nearly 3 million people in 1986.
Still, recent attempts to overhaul the immigration system have failed, and Biden’s plan is likely to face an uphill battle on Capitol Hill, especially as he juggles other legislative priorities.
Biden also vowed to end some of the Trump administration’s strict immigration practices, which focused on building a border wall and restricting asylum eligibility.
Impeachment
No president entered the White House having to balance the configuration of his own administration and legislative agenda during an impeachment trial in his predecessor’s Senate.
Trump’s trial may impose strict rules that delay the approval of his Biden office.
Biden and the Democrats in Congress will have to dedicate some of their resources in the early days of his term to find out how to manage this dynamic. It is not yet clear which strategy they will land on.
Biden, who is about to be sworn in on Wednesday without any of his cabinet nominees confirmed, said he would like the Senate to split his time between the trial and the hearings of his nominees, as well as work to approve his Covid -19 relief bill.
“Can we spend half a day dealing with impeachment and half a day for my people to be nominated and confirmed in the Senate, in addition to moving forward with the package?” Biden asked reporters last week. “So this is my hope and expectation.”
Some Democratic parliamentarians supported the suggestion to take a double path, while others suggested waiting 100 days to transmit the impeachment article to the Senate while Biden gets his government up and running.
“I think they will have to work on both at the same time,” Klain said on Friday about the Senate. “Hopefully, the trial will not be a long one.”