How Biden can move his economic agenda without Congress
President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to reshape the economy through legislation hinges in large part on the outcome of the two Georgia runoffs in January that will decide control of the Senate. But even without a cooperative Congress, his administration will be able to act on its agenda of raising workers’ standard of living and creating good jobs by taking a series of unilateral actions under existing law.
“If you pay attention to what Trump did and go about it from a different viewpoint, you can accomplish a lot,” said Thomas Conway, president of the United Steelworkers union.
Much of this work will fall to the incoming labor secretary, whose department has the authority to issue regulations and initiate enforcement actions that could affect millions of workers and billions of dollars in income.
Biden’s labor secretary could substantially expand eligibility for time-and-a-half overtime pay. In 2016, the Obama administration extended that eligibility to salaried workers making less than about $47,500 a year, but a federal court suspended the Obama rule, and President Donald Trump’s Labor Department set the cutoff at roughly $35,500 rather than continue to appeal. The Biden administration could make millions more salaried workers eligible for time-and-ahalf overtime pay by reviving or expanding the Obama criterion and defending it in court.
The Labor Department will also have an opportunity to fill several monitoring and enforcement positions created under the United States-mexico-canada Agreement that are likely to go unfilled during the Trump administration. The accord, a revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement, allows the United States to block imports from facilities in Mexico that curtail workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively. Pursued aggressively, the enforcement could help mitigate downward pressure on U.S. manufacturing wages stemming from unfair competition with Mexico.
Biden’s Labor Department is likely to be more assertive in a variety of other enforcement