Biden boasts of early accomplishments
Guns, police reform and voting rights are up next
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden spent the first 10 minutes of his address to Congress Wednesday night touting the successes of his first 100 days, which he said got America “working again, dreaming again, discovering again and leading the world again.”
But he also conceded that some of the biggest challenges lie ahead.
“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works — and can deliver for the people,” Biden said.
A year ago, before Biden had even wrapped up the Democratic nomination, he began plotting out the course of his first 100 days, with controlling the coronavirus pandemic and shoring up a battered economy topping the list.
But if Biden’s first 100 days have been about seeking to show competence, the days to follow will be about agility — and will test his ability to navigate a conveyor belt of incendiary challenges, including immigration, gun control, police reform and voting rights.
On these issues, Biden faces calls to deliver on promises left unfulfilled for key and increasingly impatient constituencies. The administration’s actions, advocates and insiders say, will require patience and the expenditure of political capital — and will color how Americans perceive Biden and the Democratic Party in the midterm elections.
In his address Wednesday night, Biden issued urgent calls for action in all these key areas — but, for the most part, he made clear it would be up to Congress to make it happen.
“We cannot make excuses about why we cannot get these things done, especially as long as Democrats control both chambers and the presidency,” said Nina Turner, a former co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, who is running for Marcia Fudge’s old congressional seat in Ohio. “People where I come from are looking at us saying, ‘OK, you guys asked for this power, now you still tell me you can’t do anything that changes my material conditions; it doesn’t make sense.’”
Republicans, by contrast, sought to frame Biden’s work so far as government overreach that needs to be halted.
“Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams,” said Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who said many of the country’s strides in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic were due to President Donald Trump’s efforts to speed vaccine production. “It will come from you, the American people.”
People who have pushed Biden to address his more complex promises have worried over his hesitation to embrace changing the filibuster, a legislative practice that allows any senator to stop debate on a piece of legislation unless 60 members overrule the action.
“I can do the math; you can do the math. I don’t see what the path is to 60 votes to pass meaningful federal legislation as it relates to policing,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party and a member of the Movement for Black Lives. “They need to share with us in the Black community what their legislative strategy really is. Simply announcing a bill or having a bill number isn’t the same as a legislative victory. What we really want is to understand what the plan is.”
At Wednesday’s address, Biden urged Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, or similar legislation addressing police misconduct, “next month, by the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death.”
“We have a giant opportunity to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice,” he said. “Real justice. And, with the plans I outlined tonight, we have a real chance to root out systemic racism that plagues American life in many other ways.”
Biden has promised that equity would be a lodestar of his administration. Millions of demonstrators who took to the streets last year after Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer demanded not just police reform, but also that government leaders at all levels work to dismantle systemic racism. Biden has promised to play a leading role in that fight, a stance that led Black voters to support him in 2020 — and helped tilt the U.S. Senate in Democrats’ favor after runoff victories in Georgia.
Since then, Georgia has enacted limits on voting that many experts say will disenfranchise large numbers of minorities. Other states with Republican-controlled legislatures are looking to follow suit, moves that Biden has labeled “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
Biden has also promised to deliver significant action on gun control, painting himself as someone who understands the inner workings of Congress and who has “taken on the NRA twice and won.”