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 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
Read:| Biden to propose 8-year citizenship path for immigrants
