When Joe Biden took workplace in January 2021, the U.S. loss of life toll from COVID-19 had surpassed 400,000, companies had been closing at a staggering price, the American financial system was in a grim place, and outgoing President Donald Trump had simply incited an riot on the U.S. Capitol.
4 years later, Biden will depart the White Home as a single-term president, whereas Trump, now the president-elect, is able to exchange Biden on Jan. 20—and assume management of a rustic whose financial system has been reignited. In an op-ed for The American Prospect on Monday, Biden mirrored on the staggering progress his administration made.
“As president, I fought to write a new economic playbook that builds the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down,” he wrote. “I fought to make smart investments in America’s future that put us in the lead globally. I fought to create good jobs that give working families and the middle class a fair shot and the chance to get ahead. I fought to lower costs for consumers and give smaller businesses a fair chance to compete.”
Biden emphasised his key priorities: revitalizing struggling communities, creating well-paying jobs, and strengthening U.S. financial management around the globe. He highlighted the success of serious laws like his bipartisan infrastructure legislation, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Discount Act, which “together mark the most significant investment in the United States since the New Deal.”
However his work isn’t over but. With a little bit over a month in his presidency, Biden is specializing in 4 major areas, in keeping with Bloomberg: synthetic intelligence, clemency, pupil mortgage forgiveness, and land safety.
In a memo addressing the priorities, which was launched over the weekend, White Home communications director Ben LaBolt didn’t specify the motion to be taken on AI. Nevertheless, Biden will award new funding by way of CHIPS.
Biden will signal new commutations and pardons, which the White Home has beforehand stated will deal with folks whom the Trump administration may persecute. This follows Biden enacting the largest single-day act of clemency in fashionable historical past: pardoning 39 folks from serving sentences and granting commutations to about 1,500 people positioned on home arrest in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic who served for at the very least one 12 months.
In essentially the most high-profile case, Biden introduced on Dec. 1 that he had signed a pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who had pleaded responsible to 3 felony tax offenses and 6 misdemeanor tax offenses.
Final, the memo defined how Biden would additional shield lands and water.
Local weather change is likely one of the large coverage subjects that the Trump administration is claimed to be considerably threatened by. And Biden will “continue taking action to protect our lands and waters and continue our climate ambition alongside state, local, and tribal and business leaders,” in keeping with the memo.
LaBolt additionally identified how a president’s legacy was felt even lengthy after they’d left workplace and that Biden and Harris’ administration successes would proceed to reverberate.
“A presidency is not measured just in weeks, months, or four-year terms alone—rather its impact is evaluated for years and decades to come,” LaBolt wrote. “The seeds President Biden and Vice President Harris planted over the past four years are beginning to sprout and their potential will be fully unleashed long into the future.”
To little success to date, Democrats like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and outgoing Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri spent the previous month advocating for Biden to allow the nationwide archivist to signal the Equal Rights Modification into the Structure, enshrining protections for girls and LGBTQ+ people, every of whom will face menace below the incoming Trump administration.
In the meantime, Democratic management on Capitol Hill has prioritized confirming judges.
Biden, nevertheless, flexed his govt muscle by insisting he’d use his veto energy to not signal the JUDGES Act, ought to it move the Home and land on his desk. This invoice, if handed and signed by the president, would give Trump energy over 22 new judicial appointments.
