Joe Biden took his oath of office and is now officially President Biden. It was a few hours later that he was in the Oval Office signing his first executive orders. In fact, President Biden signed 17 executive orders yesterday. That seems like a lot of unilateral partisan decision making for someone that ran on bringing bipartisanship back to Washington. These executive orders are just scratching the surface for what President Biden wants to accomplish in his first 100 days in office. Let’s just take a look at those first 17 executive orders and look ahead to what’s to come in President Biden’s first 100 days in office.
Again, there were 17 executive orders signed yesterday and they include actions that: impose a 100 day mask mandate on federal property, restructure the federal governments coordination to the COVID-19 pandemic, rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO), extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, extend the pause of student loan payments and interest, rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, end the Keystone XL pipeline and revoke oil and gas development on federal land, advance racial equity through the federal government, count non-citizens in U.S. Census, strengthen workplace discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, defend the “Dreamers” program for undocumented Americans, end President Trump’s travel ban, change arrest priorities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stop border wall construction, keep protections for a group of immigrant Liberians in the country, freeze Trump administration regulatory actions, and formulate an Executive Branch ethics doctrine (Erickson 2021).
I thought a President Biden would want to forge his own path going into inauguration day. I was wrong. Based on the executive orders signed yesterday we are headed towards a third term for President Obama. On climate, President Biden will rejoin the same agreement that we joined under President Obama. The Pairs Climate Agreement is aimed at reducing carbon emissions worldwide. This agreement, as it stands, will kill our energy industry with no real alternative. The Biden administration is still rejoining even after we know countries that have tried to eliminate carbon emissions can’t even reach their goals (Plumer & Popovich 2018). Worse than that, we are tying our own hands while the rest of the world stands by and watches China grow exponentially. There has been no real push for renewable energies in quantity of quality, but President Biden still comes out of the gate and kills the Keystone XL pipeline. This alone kills 11,000 jobs that the pipeline would have sustained in 2021 (Conklin 2021). The fact that we are in the middle of an economic downtown should make President Biden second guess himself. The Biden administration has already put the cart before the horse, and it looks like they are going to be stuck there for a while. I am one who is for climate solutions. I would encourage you to look up some of the work Senator Mike Braun and Senator Chris Coons are doing in Congress. They are working towards smart market-based climate policy. The Paris Climate Agreement will continue the Obama era policy of patting ourselves on the back while nothing gets done. On immigration, President Biden is starting with the same policies that President Obama worked on. President Biden is again focusing on “dreamers” and not allowing ICE to do their job. President Biden is even pausing construction on President Trump’s border wall. He even vowed on the campaign trail that there will not be one more foot of wall built. President Biden may not have a choice on what happens there though. If the money is already allocated for wall funding, he would either have to stop construction and pay the money or let them finish what is already allocated (Hernandez & Miroff 2021). There is also the possibility that he can keep his campaign promise and use the funds on alternative border technology (Sanchez 2021). Again, a President Biden is doing everything on immigration by executive order and not working towards bipartisan solutions that will pass congress. We can’t ignore the executive orders on discrimination and racial equity. It wouldn’t be another Obama term if there was no identity politics in the mix.
On both climate and immigration President Biden is just President Obama 2.0. That makes me feel good as a Republican. Obama era policy was rejected in 2016. There are many that think 2016 was just a rejection of Hillary Clinton, but I am in the camp that knows it was a rejection of the neoliberal policy that the Obama administration pushed. Continuing Obama’s presidency will ensure that Republicans take back the House and Senate in 2 years and take back the White House in 4 years. President Obama may have been popular as a person, but his policy was hated across middle America.
Beyond day one, in President Biden’s first 100 days he would like to get 100 million vaccines out, open most U.S. schools, introduce an immigration proposal with a pathway to citizenship, and pass a $1.9 trillion economic relief plan (Wolf 2021). President Biden also plans to initiate his signature campaign economic recovery plan, the “Build Back Better” plan, which would include a $2 trillion dollar infrastructure package, organize a climate world summit, repeal the 2017 Trump tax cuts, pass gun reforms, pass the Equality Act, and pass the Violence Against Women Act (Erickson 2021). Some of the goals are possible, some are not, and even the ones that are possible are not good plans.
Let’s start with the goals he doesn’t need Congress for. Throughout the entire transition we heard about getting 100 million vaccines out in the first 100 days. Biden even said that, “This will be the most efficient mass vaccination plan in US history.” (Dezenski 2020). The media keeps on parroting this same story. They can’t believe he is being this ambitious. They can’t believe it because he’s not being ambitious. In the past two weeks, the United States has been vaccinating about 800,000 people per day. In the past week, the United States has vaccinated 900,000 people per day (Data 2021). For President Biden to reach his goal he would literally have to do nothing. This is not a good goal and the media should stop treating it like it is. Schools are already opening and more will open as teachers start to get vaccinates, so that a goal that will fall in President Biden’s lap. The climate world summit that President Biden wants to organize is a nothing burger and would just create a Paris Climate Agreement 2.0. Outside of his day one executive orders, there is not much more a President Biden will do unilaterally.
The rest of President Biden’s goals in the first 100 days would require help from Congress. There is a general agreement that there will be another economic recovery package and $1.9 trillion is likely a number that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Everything else may be a bit harder to pass. President Trump wanted an infrastructure and immigration bill passed his entire term and could not get them off the ground. He even had a strong House majority and a decent Senate Majority for the first 2 years. With only 50 senators and a small House majority there will be no immigration bill passed. There is just not a bipartisan consensus on immigration. Everyone in Washington agrees that there is a problem. But everyone in Washington has a different way to fix the problem. The infrastructure bill could be something that gets done. There has been an appetite for a while. I could see President Biden expending a lot of political capital to try to get something like that passed in a bipartisan way. The tax cuts would depend on whether there is a filibuster needed to repeal them. If there is a filibuster needed, then the tax cuts stay and if there is not a filibuster needed, then the tax cuts go. There will be no significant gun reforms passed. There is no road where that gets past a filibuster vote. Finally, the Equality Act and the Violence Against Women Act is another tossup. Personally, I think the Equality Act has a lot of poison pills on social issues that Republicans will never go for. The Violence Against Women Act is something a President Biden will really push for as he was the author of the original bill. This is a bill that did not make it anywhere under President Trump because there were poison pills that were added that would not allow Republicans to vote for it. I think a President Biden will use some political capital on trying to push this through as well. Overall, an economic recovery package, and infrastructure bill, and passing the Violence Against Women Act would be three big bipartisan wins.
In the first 100 days all that will likely pass is the economic recovery package. Everything else, if passed, will take more time. If they can get an infrastructure bill and the Violence Against Women Act passed that would be two big future wins. I would even count that as a promise kept even if it falls outside of the 100-day window. There are obvious fundamental differences I will have with a Biden administration, but I will celebrate the future wins that they will have. I will also call out their losses. I can only hope the administration succeeds over their first 100 days and beyond.
Sources
Conklin, Audrey. (2021, Jan 19) Biden ending Keystone pipeline would kill thousands of American jobs. Retrieved from https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/american-jobs-biden-keystone-xl-pipeline
Dezenski, Lauren. (2020, Dec 8) Biden’s extremely ambitious first 100 days. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/politics/biden-100-days-coronavirus-vaccines/index.html
Erickson, Bo. (2021, Jan 19) What Joe Biden has promised to do on “Day One” and in his first 100 days as president. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-first-100-days-president-actions/
Erickson, Bo. (2021, Jan 21) Biden signs executive actions on COVID, climate change, immigration and more. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-signs-executive-orders-day-one/
Hernandez, Arelis; Miroff, Nick. (2021, Jan 21) Biden orders a ‘pause’ on border wall construction, bringing crews to halt. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/biden-border-wall-executive-order/2021/01/20/5f472456-5b32-11eb-aaad-93988621dd28_story.html
Our World in Data. (2021, Dec 21) Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Plumer, Brad; Popovich, Nadja. (2018, Dec 7) The World Still Isn’t Meeting Its Climate Goals. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/07/climate/world-emissions-paris-goals-not-on-track.html
Sanchez, Sandra. (2021, Jan 4) Biden can redirect new border wall funding lawmakers say they OK’d to avert shutdown. Retrieved from https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/the-border-wall/biden-can-redirect-new-border-wall-funding-lawmakers-say-they-okd-to-avert-shutdown/
Wolf, Zachary. (2021, Jan 20) Biden’s 100-day sprint to undo Trump’s 4 years. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/first-100-days-biden-challenge-trump-legacy/index.html
Politics with Kegan Prentice 