Biden Is Likely To Take These Five Paths On Policy As President
What would Biden, if elected, do as president? Obviously it’s hard to predict the agenda of an entire four-year presidency before it starts. We don’t know if his party will have control of the Senate, though it will almost certainly control the House. We don’t know which of Biden’s campaign proposals were just for show and which he really cares about. We don’t know where he and Democrats in Congress might disagree. Most importantly, we don’t know what might happen in the U.S. or abroad that we can’t foresee right now but that would force Biden to dramatically change course. (For example, the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks reshaped George W. Bush’s tenure.)
But it’s worth thinking about Biden’s potential policies in five general buckets:
The immediate crises. It’s almost certain that Biden’s first major policy initiatives would be aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19 and helping the nation deal with the economic fallout of the virus. Policies would likely include increased funding for COVID-19 testing and contract tracing and also aid to states and localities to make up for budget shortfalls they are facing. A Biden administration might also take immediate steps to address climate change, another issue Democrats view as an immediate crisis. For example, an economic stimulus bill with state aid and COVID-19 testing funds could also include some kind of program that hires people for clean-energy jobs.
The Pelosi agenda. Since they won control of the House in 2018, Democrats have passed a ton of legislation in that chamber that the GOP-controlled Senate has not moved forward and that Trump would probably have vetoed anyway. But if Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency, expect these bills to be revived — after all, they are already fully written pieces of legislation that the overwhelming majority of House Democrats supported. These provisions include a $15 minimum wage, a path to citizenship for people who came to the country illegally as children, automatic voter registration, D.C. statehood, barring police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, background checks for virtually all gun sales and anti-discrimination protections for LGBQT people.
The left’s wing’s ideas. These are things House Democrats didn’t adopt in 2019-2020 — in part because they are divisive within the party, complicated to execute, or both. Examples include a public health insurance option, the Green New Deal, adding federal judges and/or Supreme Court justices, or making other major changes to the federal judiciary. These ideas are likely to create some division between the party’s more left-wing and more centrist blocs — with Biden likely to try to find some compromises between them.
The executive branch. There are lots of policies that Trump implemented through federal agencies that Biden can unwind — and the former vice president is likely to use executive power to implement some of his own agenda, particularly if Democrats don’t control the Senate. For example, I would expect Biden to reverse basically all of Trump’s immigration policies and insert the U.S. back into the Paris climate change accords and other international agreements. Some liberals are pushing for Biden to use executive power to forgive up to $50,000 of student loan debt for many Americans, a step that would be a bold and probably controversial use of executive power.
Race and identity. Biden, an older white man leading the major party that is most closely aligned with America’s younger voters and those of color, has suggested he wants to really push the nation forward on racial issues in particular. So he might try to make some historic moves on this front. For example, if Biden wins and Democrats are in control of the Senate, I expect to see 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer retire early in Biden’s tenure (to avoid any immediate possibility that Republicans could block filling his seat with a Democrat or leave it open). Biden could then implement his campaign promise of putting the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.