Washington:Joe Biden has given himself an imposing to-do list for his earliest days as president and many promises to keep over the long haul.
Overshadowing everything at the very start is Biden’s effort to win congressional approval of a $1.9 trillion plan to combat the coronavirus and the economic misery it has caused.
But climate change, immigration, health care and more will be competing for attention — and dollars. Altogether Biden has laid out an ambitious if not always detailed set of plans and promises across the range of public policy.
Biden’s hefty to-do list starts with a flurry of orders Biden's likely executive actions after the inauguration:
THURSDAY
— Executive action laying out new steps to expand virus testing, protect workers and set new public health standards.
FRIDAY
— Directive to agencies to take unspecified immediate action to deliver economic relief from the pandemic.
BY FEB. 1
— Executive actions to strengthen “buy American” provisions.
— Executive actions to address climate change.
— First steps to expand access to health care, for low-income women, women of colour and other segments of the population.
— First steps to reunite families still separated at the Mexican border.
BEYOND (some may be tried sooner)
— Ensure 100 million vaccines have been given before the end of his first 100 days.
— Ensure 100 federally supported vaccination centres are up and running in his first month.
— Expand use of the Defense Production Act to direct the manufacture of critical pandemic supplies.
— Win passage of a $2 trillion climate package to get the U.S. to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
— Seek passage of a “Medicare-like public option” to compete alongside private insurance markets for working-age Americans; increase existing premium subsidies.
— Eliminate certain corporate tax cuts where possible, by executive action, while doubling the levies U.S. firms pay on foreign profits.
— Make a plan within 100 days to end homelessness.
— Expand legal immigration slots.
— Freeze deportations for 100 days, then restore the Obama-era principle of deporting foreigners who are seen as posing a national security threat or who have committed crimes in addition to the crime of illegal entry, thereby pulling back the broad deportation policy of the Trump years.
— Halt financing of further construction of the wall along the Mexican border.
— Within 100 days, establish a police oversight commission to combat institutional racism by then.
— Reinstate federal guidance, issued by Obama and revoked by Trump, to protect transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms and locker rooms following their gender identity.
— Ensure taxes are not raised on anyone making under $400,000.
— Restore Obama-era rules on campus sexual misconduct and a policy that aimed to cut federal money to for-profit colleges that left students with heavy debt they can’t payback.
— Support legislation to make two years of community college free and to make public colleges free for families with incomes below $125,000, with no repayment of student loans required for people who make less than $25,000 a year and, for others, no repayment rate above 5% of discretionary income.
— Support increasing the national minimum wage to $15.
— Try to win passage of a plan to spend $700 billion boosting manufacturing and research and development.
— Establish a commission to study expanding the Supreme Court.
AP
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