Biden to seek fast start to his term
President-elect plans executive actions and aggressive legislation
WASHINGTON » President-elect Joe Biden, inheriting a collection of crises unlike any in generations, plans to open his administration with dozens of executive directives on top of expansive legislative proposals in a 10-day blitz meant to signal a turning point for a nation reeling from disease, economic turmoil, racial strife and now the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol.
Biden’s team has developed a raft of decrees that he can issue on his own authority after the inauguration Wednesday to begin reversing some of President Donald Trump’s most hotly disputed policies. Advisers hope the flurry of action, without waiting for Congress, will establish a sense of momentum for the new president even as the Senate puts his predecessor on trial.
On his first day in office alone, Biden intends a flurry of executive orders that will be partly sub
stantive and partly symbolic. They include rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, extending pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments, issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from families after crossing the border, according to a memo circulated Saturday by Ron Klain, his incoming White House chief of staff.
The blueprint of executive action comes after Biden announced that he will push Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion package of economic stimulus and pandemic relief, signaling a willingness to be aggressive on policy issues and confronting Republicans from the start to take their lead from him.
He also plans to send sweeping immigration legislation on his first day in office providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people in the country illegally. Along
with his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans for the coronavirus in his first 100 days, it is an expansive set of priorities for a new president that could be a defining test of his deal-making abilities and command of the federal government.
For Biden, an energetic debut could be critical to moving the country beyond the endless dramas surrounding Trump. In the 75 days since his election, Biden has provided hints of what kind of president he hopes to be: Focused on the big issues, resistant to the louder voices in his own party and uninterested in engaging in the Twitter-driven, minuteby-minute political combat that characterized the last four years and helped lead to the deadly mob assault on the Capitol.
But in a city that has become an armed camp since the Jan. 6 attack, with inaugural festivities curtailed because of both the coronavirus and the threat of domestic terrorism, Biden cannot count on much of a honeymoon.
While privately many Republicans will be relieved at his ascension after the combustible Trump, the troubles awaiting Biden are so daunting that even a veteran of a
half-century in politics may struggle to get a grip on the ship of state. And even if the partisan enmities of the Trump era ebb somewhat, there remain deep ideological divisions on the substance of Biden’s policies — on taxation, government spending, immigration, health care and other issues — that will challenge much of his agenda on Capitol Hill.
“You have a public health crisis, an economic challenge of huge proportions, racial, ethnic strife and political polarization on steroids,” said Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who served as a top adviser to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “These challenges require big, broad strokes. The challenge is whether there’s a partner on the other side to deal with them.”
Biden’s transition has been unlike that of any other new president, and so will the early days of his administration. The usual spirit of change and optimism that surrounds a newly elected president has been overshadowed by a defeated president who has refused to concede either the election or the spotlight.
Biden spent much of this interregnum trying not to be
distracted as he assembled a Cabinet and White House staff of government veterans that look remarkably like the Obama administration that left office four years ago. He put together a team with expansive diversity in race and gender, but without many of the party’s more outspoken progressive figures, to the disappointment of the left.
“He’s obviously prioritized competence and longevity of experience in a lot of his appointments,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-calif., who was national co-chairman of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign.
But he said Biden’s team had reached out to progressives like him.
“I do hope we’ll continue to see progressives who tend to be younger and newer to the party fill a lot of the undersecretary and assistant secretary positions even if they’re not at the very top,” Khanna said.
At the very top will be one of the most familiar figures in modern American politics but one who has appeared to evolve in recent weeks. After a lifetime in Washington, the restless, gabby man of consuming ambition who always had something to say and something to prove
seems to have given way to a more self-assured 78-yearold who finally achieved his life’s dream.
“He is much calmer,” said Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a close ally. “The anxiety of running and the pressure of a campaign, all that’s behind him now.”
Throughout his career, Biden has been a divining rod for the middle of his party, more moderate in the 1990s when that was in vogue and more liberal during the Obama era when the center of gravity shifted.
He is driven less by ideology than by the mechanics of how to put together a bill that will satisfy various power centers. A “fingertip politician,” as he likes to put it, Biden is described by aides and friends as more intuitive about other politicians and their needs than was Obama, but less of a novel thinker.
“Joe Biden is somebody who understands how politicians work and how important political sensitivities are on each side, which is drastically different than President Obama,” said former Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, who as the House Republican leader negotiated with Biden and came to like him. “I would think there may be a time when Washington could get something done. At this point, I don’t know, the extreme elements on both sides are so strong right now, it’s going to be difficult.”
In his memo to Biden’s senior staff Saturday, Klain underscored the urgency of the overlapping crises and the need for the new president to act quickly to “reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration.”
While other presidents issued executive actions right after taking office, Biden plans to enact a dozen Wednesday. But he risks being criticized for doing what Democrats accused Trump of doing in terms of abusing the power of his office through an expansive interpretation of his executive power.
On Biden’s second day in office, he will sign actions related to the coronavirus pandemic aimed at helping schools and businesses to reopen safely, expand testing, protect workers and clarify public health standards.
On his third day, he will direct Cabinet agencies to “take immediate action to deliver economic relief to working families,” Klain said in the memo.