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The scope of the stimulus legislation will likely depend on the results of the Senate runoff in Georgia in early January, a little more than two weeks before Biden’s inauguration. If any of the Democrats fail to topple their rivals in office, and the body remains under the control of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, Biden’s ambitions will be verified from the start. The immigration legislation that Biden said he plans to send to Congress within its first 100 days would likely be dead upon arrival.
But sources familiar with the internal discussions emphasized that controlling the growing coronavirus crisis is by far Biden’s main concern. Until that happens, one of the sources said, the president-elect’s broader legislative agenda is likely to take a backseat.
The realities of a divided Washington, or one in which Democrats have a slim majority in Congress, means that any major legislative initiative will need some bipartisan support or demand a uniform Democratic endorsement, further complicating the road ahead. Biden is planning an announcement sometime in December to explain his priorities to the public, according to a source involved in the plans.
Executive options
Biden has a wider margin when it comes to executive orders.
His transition team has spent months thinking about the unilateral actions that Biden could take almost immediately upon entering the White House. No final decisions have been made on specific steps, but a transition official said Biden will consider using the many “levers at his disposal.”
“There are several things that are going to happen at the same time,” Biden said. “But the most important thing, I think, is to focus on those people, who always, when the crisis hits, are the first to hit, and recovery is the last.”
Health workers and first responders, he said, should be first in line to receive a Covid vaccine once its use is authorized and distribution channels open.
But Biden acknowledged that much of his agenda could come to “depend on the kind of cooperation that he may or may not get from the US Congress.”
He cited his commitment to send legislation with a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants to the Senate, but also said he was ready to immediately reverse some of Trump’s “very damaging” executive actions, particularly those related to the weather. .
Some of that can be done by order, Biden’s campaign said before the election, detailing a series of measures that would reduce emissions, increase public investment in clean energy and incentivize private innovation.
But the scale of the climate agenda agreed to by the Biden-Sanders “unity working groups” will also require legislation. How it will play out remains to be seen and, like so many other issues facing the transition, it could hinge on the outcome in Georgia.
Many prominent climate activists have long believed that any significant investment in a transition from fossil fuels will need to be embedded in an expansive economic stimulus bill. By this summer, after publicly and privately committing to the Biden campaign, they came away with cautious optimism that the president-elect’s team was “reaching” a similar understanding.
Some of the most notable first jobs in the administration awaiting Biden, which is joining at breakneck speed with the deployment of nominees to influential Cabinet positions and ad hires for senior White House positions, will be carried out. out of the Oval Office. Trump officials have gutted or paralyzed agencies whose statutes collide with the president’s long-standing efforts to crush what his former chief strategist ironically called “the administrative state.”
That means an initial effort, Biden said in his interview with NBC News, to rebuild the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, he said, has been “gutted” by Trump.
There is also a growing push for the new administration to make an early stir using the executive branch to write off student loan debt. Biden has asked Congress to grant relief to borrowers, but a plan promoted by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren argues that Biden could, with the stroke of his pen , cancel up to $ 50,000 per person.
The To Do List
The to-do list is long: Biden during the campaign vowed to make the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act an early priority. As part of that, she committed to directing federal resources to combat violence against transgender women, with a specific mind for transgender women of color.
He has also assured the union movement that he will re-engage with the government workers unions.
“On Biden’s first day in office, he will restore the rights of federal employees to organize and bargain collectively,” he read the pledge on Biden’s campaign website, “and will direct his agencies to bargain with unions in federal employees on non-mandatory bargaining topics. “
The shadow of Trump’s term looms over much of Biden’s initial agenda.
The president has repeatedly relied on the Justice Department to address his political causes. Biden during the campaign promised to resurrect the barriers between senior elected officials and senior staff and prosecutors.
The first step, his campaign said, would come through the issuance of an executive order “stating that no White House staff or any member of its administration may initiate, encourage, obstruct, or unduly influence investigations or specific prosecutions of the Department. of Justice for no reason. “
Anyone in the administration found to be in violation of that code would be fired.
Several of Biden’s national priorities overlap with his desire to re-engage with other leading powers on the world stage. His “first day” agenda includes a promise to immediately meet with the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, both of which were abandoned by Trump.
Biden’s international climate dossier includes the call for a “world summit” that could build and pursue more ambitious terrain than the one agreed to in Paris.
Trying to resurrect the Iran nuclear deal will be a more complicated proposition, an even more complicated proposition because of the recent assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist, an assassination Tehran has blamed on Israel.
