Biden wins what would the first 100 days of his
presidency look like?
If he succeeds in defeating Trump, the Democrat will
have to urgently tackle the coronavirus pandemic as well as rebuild global
relationships
Daniel
Strauss and Julian Borger in Washington
Wed 28 Oct
2020 06.26 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/28/joe-biden-presidency-first-100-days
If Joe
Biden wins the 2020 US election against Donald Trump next week, the new
president-elect will face enormous pressures to implement a laundry list of
priorities on a range of issues from foreign policy to the climate crisis,
reversing many of the stark changes implemented by his predecessor.
But Biden’s
first and most pressing task for his first 100 days in the White House would be
to roll out a new nationwide plan to fight the coronavirus crisis, which has
claimed more than 220,000 lives in the US and infected millions – more than any
other country in the world – as well as taking steps to fix the disastrous
economic fallout.
And, while
the new president might be fresh from victory, the moderate Biden will also
have to wrangle with his own side – a Democratic party with an increasingly
influential liberal wing, hungry for major institutional changes to try to
answer some of the most urgent questions over the country’s future.
“He
basically has to do something historic,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democratic
activist and former chief of staff to the progressive New York congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “He’s being handed a depression, a pandemic, and he’s
being elected on a mandate to actually solve this stuff and do something big.”
In the
best-case scenario for Biden, he would be elected in a landslide, and the
Democrats would flip the Senate, taking control of both chambers of Congress.
If that happens, Biden and his team could enact their most ambitious plans for
a presidency with the same feel as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s, which saw the
sweeping New Deal recovery and relief programs in response to the economic crisis
of the 1930s.
“In many
ways, they’re going to be stepping in the same situation that we stepped in in
2009. But in some ways worse,” said the former Obama administration deputy
labor secretary Chris Lu, who ran the 44th president’s transition team in 2008.
“We came in during the Great Recession, they’re going to be taking over within
a recession as well. They have the added and much more difficult challenge of
dealing with a public health crisis as well.”
By the time
of the inauguration in January 2021, more than 350,000 Americans could have
died from coronavirus, according to projections that assume current policies
and trajectories are maintained.
Biden’s
“first order of business” in office would probably be aimed at containing the
death toll and addressing the economic damage, said Neera Tanden, who was
director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign, and went
on to be senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS).
The Biden
campaign has proposed a science-led plan that includes a national mask mandate
(though local authorities would have the final word on implementation),
expanding testing and contact tracing, taking steps to prevent surprise medical
billing for Covid treatments, and greater federal financial assistance for
struggling families.
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In Congress,
the sense of urgency is on a Covid relief bill that lawmakers have been unable
to pass in the past few weeks. While the Democrats have been pushing for a $2tn
package, Republicans have balked at the cost, especially for an expansion of
testing.
“I think
the most important thing is likely to be a legislative package that addresses
the virus, and the ability to contain the virus and then responds to the
economic pain that the virus has caused,” Tanden said.
Throughout
his presidential campaign, Biden has shared a list with voters of what he would
do if elected president, many items of which would directly reverse the work of
the Trump administration. These include re-entering the Paris climate
agreement, which the US is set to exit on 4 November, 24 hours after election
day. He would also rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to
limit its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of harsh economic
sanctions. And he would also push for an extension of Barack Obama’s Affordable
Care Act, which Trump and his allies have repeatedly attempted to dismantle.
There’s
also a strong expectation that Congress would consider some kind of policing
reform package following the summer’s mass protests over the police killing of
George Floyd in Minneapolis, although it’s unclear if such proposals could
ultimately survive the partisan gridlock and sausage making of the legislative
process.
And there
would be immense pressure for a Biden administration to overhaul the
filibuster, an antiquated Senate rule the party out of power has wielded to
stall legislation and nominees in the chamber.
The destiny
of Biden’s first 100 days largely depends on which party controls the House of
Representatives and the Senate – and by how many seats. Incoming presidents
often bring in a new Senate majority with them. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s
election carried with him 12 Republican Senate victories. In 2004, when George
Bush won re-election, Republicans gained five Senate seats. And when Barack
Obama was elected president in 2008, Democrats flipped eight Senate seats.
Democrats already hold the House, and this year, the party is favorite to pick
up somewhere between one and eight Senate seats. If it can add four seats to
its tally, or three seats plus the White House, it would give Democrats a slim
majority in the chamber.
Control of
the Senate is crucial for a Biden presidency. Without it, much of his agenda is
all but certain to stay in limbo. Biden has said there is a hidden swath of
sitting Republican senators open to working with Democrats under a Biden
administration. But current senators are a bit more pessimistic.
Senator
Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, shrugged when asked if there were more than a
handful of Republican senators who could work with Democrats under a Biden
presidency.
“All I know
is we’ve seen 46 and a half spineless Republicans the last four years and
however many in the House who have shown no courage in standing up to the most
corrupt, divisive president of our lifetime,” Brown said.
With or
without Democratic control of the Senate, however, the first days of a Biden
administration are also likely to see a flurry of executive actions addressing
urgent foreign policy issues and undoing actions of the Trump administration.
By
inauguration day there will be just over two weeks left before the expiration
of the New Start treaty, the only arms control agreement to survive the Trump
era. If Moscow is willing (and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has
suggested it is), the treaty can be extended for up to five years by an
exchange of diplomatic notes.
Senior
Democrats also say Biden will move immediately to restore US membership of the
World Health Organization (WHO) and resume financial contributions, announce
the US is rejoining the Paris climate agreement, and reverse the Trump
administration’s travel bans for travelers from Muslim countries.
Biden has
pledged he will also rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint
Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA), though the timing of that will
depend on a sequencing agreement with Iran on what Tehran would have to do
first to return to full compliance with the JCPOA limits on its nuclear
activities.
“I think
part of what they’re going to be doing is trying to rebuild international order
– not to look exactly the same as they used to – but to have once again a focus
on international norms, agreements, treaties,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s closest
foreign policy adviser said.
“There are
a lot of things that can be done off the bat to pick up as best you can pieces
of the infrastructure that were in place in 2016. And then there are going to
be other areas where you just have to start from scratch as if a hurricane came
in and blew everything down.”
Rhodes
cited combatting disinformation and the threats to democracy as new global
priorities where institutions and policies might have to be developed from
scratch. The Biden platform calls for the convening of a summit of democracies
in his first year in office, in an effort to retake the mantle of “leader of
the free world” for the US.
There will
be pressure from progressives in the party to go beyond a simple reconstitution
of the pre-Trump international order, in particular in reassessing US relations
with autocratic allies like Saudi Arabia. One option on the table is an early
presidential signature on legislation, already agreed by Congress, to curb US
support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
“There’s a
whole list of things that Trump has done with executive power that are fairly
easy to reverse – basically reinvesting in the UN, the WHO, the Paris climate
accord, the JCPOA,” said Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser.
“The question is, how do you take it to the next step and the step after that
and begin to move a new agenda.”
For months,
the liberal wing of the Democratic party and the more establishment wing have
existed in relative harmony as they came together around a singular mission:
preventing Trump from winning a second term.
But
tensions are starting to surface over who Biden might fill his cabinet with.
Publicly and privately, Democratic groups have polled members, begun
strategizing, and offered warning shots on how Biden should staff the leadership
of a possible administration.
Biden
himself has vowed to make it more diverse than any other. Powerful Democratic
leaders have also advocated for a Biden administration to include African
Americans running agencies other than the Department of Housing and Urban
Development or the Department of Transportation.
But in
terms of ideology, liberal Democrats have begun quietly pushing for progressive
champions like the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont senator
Bernie Sanders or Lael Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of
governors, to get powerful, high-profile positions. Warren has been mentioned
as a potential treasury secretary or attorney general. Sanders is eyeing
running the Department of Labor. Brainard too has been mentioned as a possible
treasury secretary.
Biden is
widely expected to bring close allies to the White House if he wins, many of
them more centrist than liberal. Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff when
he was vice-president in the Obama administration, could return. The Delaware
senator Chris Coons, a longtime Biden friend, has been mentioned in foreign
policy circles as a possible secretary of state, alongside the former Obama
administration national security adviser Susan Rice and the Connecticut senator
Chris Murphy, a dark horse. Coons allies circulated a five-page document
arguing that he should get the job.
Murphy told
the Guardian foreign policy was key to fighting the coronavirus.
“We
ultimately can’t fight this virus or any other virus if we don’t have allies
and friends, unless we’re involved in the global vaccine effort, unless we’re
building our global public health prevention infrastructure,” Murphy said.
Some of the
possible appointees are dependent on the outcome of the other 2020 elections.
The Alabama senator Doug Jones, a longtime friend of Biden’s and the most
endangered Democrat running for re-election, has been mentioned as a possible
attorney general. Others have pointed to Warren or Senator Amy Klobuchar, or
the former acting attorney general Sally Yates for the post. Biden himself has
said he would like to reinstate the civil rights division of the justice
department and further embed it in the White House.
But Jones
told the Guardian that Biden wants him in the Senate.
“Joe Biden
wants me in the Senate and that’s where he is focused to try to help me and I
to try and help him,” Jones said in an interview. “And that’s the goal …
because I can best help a Biden administration bring together the kind of
coalition that’s going to be necessary to get legislation done,” he said.
“That’s the
key. He needs a voice like mine in the United States Senate to make things
happen, to bring people from both sides of the aisle” together, Jones added.
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