Joe Biden’s government agenda: 10 issues he can do with out the Senate

President-elect Joe Biden seems like he should discover a strategy to govern with no Democratic Senate to help him.

As of this writing, there may be nonetheless an opportunity that Democrats will win a razor-thin Senate majority in the event that they win each Georgia Senate runoffs on January 5. In the event that they sweep the state, they’ll have 50 seats, and future Vice President Kamala Harris will be capable of break the tie and make Chuck Schumer majority chief. But when Democrats lose one or each seats, they’ll be caught with Senate Majority Chief Mitch McConnell. And even in a situation with a slim Democratic majority, they’ll must depend on moderates like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who’s refused to get rid of the filibuster.

That places Biden at a drawback in his first months in workplace, relative to the 4 presidents previous him, who all had a federal trifecta (president, Home, Senate) for at the very least a few of their first 12 months. But it surely doesn’t imply he’ll be powerless. In international affairs, as an example, he has a variety of room to maneuver, from rejoining the Paris local weather accord to reengaging with Iran on nuclear points.

On home coverage — the main target of this piece — his powers are extra restricted. However “extra restricted” isn’t “nonexistent.” Present legal guidelines give the president and his Cupboard a great deal of flexibility in proposing and implementing laws. That flexibility might be used for some pretty sweeping coverage adjustments, from forgiving pupil debt to shutting down coal vegetation.

Pushing the bounds of government authority is bound to impress authorized challenges that the Biden administration may lose, particularly with a 6-Three Republican Supreme Court docket. However even when solely half of the choices beneath are applied and affirmed by the courts, the sensible results would nonetheless be vastly important.

The perfect work to this point on the subsequent Democratic president’s government motion choices has been executed by the American Prospect by way of its Day One Agenda challenge. Most of the beneath choices are explicated in TAP’s bundle; I’ve added a number of ones they left off as nicely, and have tried to provide a set of choices in instances (like monetary regulation) the place Biden has an enormous vary of doable insurance policies.

This isn’t a complete checklist by any means, however the concepts beneath on 10 concern areas ought to give a style of among the choices at his disposal and underscore an vital level: {that a} Biden presidency with no Democratic Senate can nonetheless act aggressively to attain his marketing campaign guarantees.

Preventing local weather change

The unhealthy information is that Joe Biden’s plan to speculate $2 trillion in clear power over 4 years might be useless on arrival with a Republican Senate. However the excellent news is that there’s a ton the chief department can do all by itself to crack down on local weather change.

The obvious steps contain reviving measures taken throughout the Obama administration. Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris local weather accord on day one in all his presidency.

Spencer Platt/Getty Photographs

Past that, he may revive the greater than 125 environmental guidelines (and counting) — together with greater than 40 involving greenhouse gases straight — that the Trump administration rolled again. He may restore California’s waiver permitting it to set stricter automobile emissions guidelines, which the Trump administration has tried to revoke. He may revoke the Reasonably priced Clear Power rule, the Trump’s administration’s substitute for the Obama administration’s Clear Energy Plan rule, and change it with a rule resulting in net-zero emissions by 2035, his acknowledged objective for his local weather coverage.

Vox’s Umair Irfan has a full checklist of government actions that Biden has already dedicated to taking. Listed below are a number of notable ones:

Requiring aggressive methane air pollution limits for brand new oil and fuel operations

Utilizing the federal authorities procurement system — which spends $500 billion yearly — to drive towards 100 % clear power and zero-emissions autos

Guaranteeing that each one US authorities installations, buildings, and amenities are extra environment friendly and climate-ready, harnessing the buying energy and provide chains to drive innovation

Lowering greenhouse fuel emissions from transportation — the fastest-growing supply of US local weather air pollution — by preserving and implementing the prevailing Clear Air Act, and growing rigorous new gasoline economic system requirements geared toward making certain 100 % of recent light- and medium-duty autos will likely be electrified and annual enhancements are made for heavy-duty autos

Doubling down on the liquid fuels of the long run, which makes agriculture a key a part of the answer to local weather change. Superior biofuels, made with supplies like switchgrass and algae, can create jobs and new options to cut back emissions in planes, oceangoing vessels, and extra.

Saving customers cash and lowering emissions by way of new, aggressive equipment and constructing effectivity requirements.

Defending America’s pure treasures by completely defending the Arctic Nationwide Wildlife Refuge and different areas impacted by President Trump’s assaults on federal lands and waters, establishing nationwide parks and monuments that replicate America’s pure heritage, banning new oil and fuel allowing on public lands and waters, modifying royalties to account for local weather prices, and establishing focused applications to boost reforestation and develop renewables on federal lands and waters, with the objective of doubling offshore wind by 2030

Forgiving pupil debt

Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have known as on the Biden administration to make use of government authority to forgive the primary $50,000 in federal pupil debt for each borrower with federal pupil loans (greater than 92 % of pupil mortgage debt is owned by the federal authorities relatively than personal issuers).

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name by way of Getty Photographs

Biden has beforehand expressed help for forgiving $10,000 per borrower, and nameless sources instructed the New York Occasions he stays skeptical of utilizing government authority for the transfer.

The thought, as Vox’s Ella Nilsen has defined, depends on an influence referred to as “compromise and settlement” authority granted underneath the Greater Training Act of 1965. Advocates for utilizing the facility for debt forgiveness, which was pioneered by authorized scholar Luke Herrine, argue that it provides the secretary of training broad powers to waive and modify money owed.

The laws supposed that energy for use in instances of hard-to-recover debt, as a strategy to settle with delinquent events, much like how money owed are discharged in chapter. However Schumer, Warren, Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and others have embraced the concept that compromise and settlement authority provides the Training Division the facility to forgive as a lot pupil debt because it likes. (Word that this can be a totally different authority than President Trump used to droop pupil debt funds this summer season.)

That might be a dramatic escalation of the facility’s utilization, and would doubtless be challenged in courtroom (although it’s not clear who can be harmed by the motion and thus have standing to sue). Critics additionally observe that holders of pupil debt are usually excessive revenue — the sizable variety of American adults who by no means attended faculty, as an example, don’t have pupil debt and would get nothing, regardless of being economically deprived relative to varsity graduates.

However advocates of aid observe proof suggesting that debt aid can encourage former debtors to take extra dangers and get higher jobs, which is nice economically, and that many debtors are literally faculty dropouts relatively than privileged individuals with superior levels.

Broaden immigration

Trump set the refugee cap for fiscal 12 months 2021 at solely 15,000 individuals, down from the 110,000-person ceiling that Barack Obama set his final 12 months in workplace. Biden has explicitly promised to lift it to 125,000 and improve it from there.

That’s solely one of many many variations between Biden’s promised government strategy on immigration and the one Trump has pursued not too long ago. Biden has promised to not construct “yet one more foot” of the US-Mexico border wall that Trump has championed. As Vox’s Nicole Narea detailed, the president-elect has additionally promised a complete rollback of many Trump initiatives, from his household separation coverage to the “journey ban” on 13 largely Muslim-majority international locations to his coverage of sending asylum seekers on the border again to Mexico. He may additionally attempt to repeal the “public cost rule,” which successfully locations a wealth check on potential immigrants and inexperienced card candidates, by way of the rulemaking course of.

He has additionally promised to revive the Obama-era Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that provided safety from deportation to just about 644,000 immigrants who arrived with out authorization as kids. He has additionally stated he’d revive, in some type, Non permanent Protected Standing (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), two applications defending a whole bunch of hundreds of immigrants from El Salvador, Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Liberia, which the Trump administration has tried to wind down.

Making a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants would require congressional motion. However there’s a lot in need of that that Biden may do to make the US extra welcoming for immigrants.

Easing the ban on marijuana

Even in jurisdictions the place medical and leisure marijuana is authorized on the state degree, promoting, shopping for, or utilizing the substance remains to be technically unlawful underneath federal regulation. Below the federal Managed Substances Act, the federal authorities has the facility to assign medication to totally different “schedules” primarily based on their medical worth and potential for abuse.

As my colleague German Lopez has defined, medication deemed to haven’t any potential for abuse are “unscheduled.” The best schedule, Schedule 1, is reserved for medication with excessive abuse potential and no medical worth, whereas Schedule 5 is for medication with some however restricted abuse potential however excessive medical worth. At the moment, marijuana is Schedule 1, the identical classification as heroin, LSD, ecstasy/MDMA, and psychedelic mushrooms. Activists have lengthy decried that classification (for each marijuana and a few of its fellow Schedule 1 medication) as minimizing the drug’s medical worth and overstating its potential for abuse.

The federal ban has main penalties in jurisdictions with lax marijuana legal guidelines, from limiting legit hashish companies’ entry to the banking system, to banning thousands and thousands of federal workers from utilizing marijuana in states the place it’s authorized, to inflicting evictions of state-legal marijuana customers from federally backed housing.

“The schedule isn’t one thing the president may change alone, however the administration, by way of the legal professional normal or secretary of well being and human companies, can start a overview course of for the present schedule,” Lopez explains.

Erik McGregor/LightRocket by way of Getty Photographs

There are problems, nonetheless. The overview course of would require some large-scale medical trials demonstrating that marijuana has medical worth; none of these exist at the moment, sarcastically due to the drug’s Schedule I classification. Furthermore, even when marijuana is rescheduled to Schedule II, it might stay successfully unlawful federally — cocaine and methamphetamine, as an example, are Schedule II medication that may be legally prescribed in sure medical contexts, however the federal authorities nonetheless aggressively prosecutes cocaine and meth instances. And rescheduling to beneath Schedule II, or eradicating marijuana from the schedule solely, may violate current worldwide treaties.

The perfect prospect for federal marijuana legalization can be for Congress to cross laws descheduling it, a lot as alcohol and tobacco will not be scheduled medication regardless of their restricted medical worth and excessive potential for abuse. The MORE Act, launched within the Senate by incoming Vice President Kamala Harris, is about for a Home vote quickly, and would completely deschedule hashish, expunge low-level marijuana offenses from offenders’ legal data, and supply early launch to convicts at the moment in jail for hashish offense. It has some (restricted) bipartisan help, with conservative Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) on board.

However MORE may fall brief within the Senate, and Biden has sounded cool towards full legalization of marijuana up to now. Gabrielle Gurley of the Prospect outlines a number of steps Biden may take if he alters his tune and must act by way of government energy, together with blanket pardons for marijuana offenses, pushing for extra research to allow administrative rescheduling of hashish, and rescinding a Reagan-era government order banning federal workers from utilizing hashish.

Reverse Trump’s rollback of air air pollution and lead poisoning guidelines

Whereas local weather change is the first environmental problem dealing with the Biden administration, the Environmental Safety Company may be doing much more to battle two different scourges with main detrimental ramifications for human beings: fine-particle air air pollution and lead poisoning in water, soil, and paint.

Lead, in fact, has profound detrimental results, from a near-doubling of coronary heart illness loss of life danger to decrease IQ and faculty testing scores, larger teen being pregnant and ingesting, extreme neurological injury, and better crime — to the extent {that a} discount in lead poisoning may need been a serious contributor to the crime decline up to now three many years. There’s additionally no secure degree of lead: The CDC makes use of 5 micrograms per deciliter as its threshold for lead poisoning in kids, however ranges beneath that may nonetheless be profoundly damaging.

Particulate matter air air pollution — particularly what specialists name PM 2.5, or particulates smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter — has a equally broad vary of detrimental results, together with elevated dementia/Alzheimer’s, sooner getting older, psychological impairment, decrease financial productiveness, worse pupil efficiency on checks, and loss of life. Air air pollution kills an estimated 250,000 People yearly.

The EPA has underregulated lead and air air pollution for years, and the Trump administration has tried to ease up on regulating air air pollution specifically. Biden’s EPA may push in the other way, and government motion on these two fronts may nicely find yourself being among the many extra consequential {that a} Biden administration may take.

Reduce on manufacturing facility farming

There’s a variety of low-hanging fruit for the Biden administration to deal with in confronting manufacturing facility farms, a sector that has helped unfold Covid-19 and been coddled by the present administration.

Humane Society Legislative Fund president Sara Amundson had a helpful rundown of those the opposite day. Biden’s administration may, as an example, reverse Trump administration strikes to extend line speeds at slaughterhouses (together with eliminating velocity limits at pig vegetation altogether). That might be an enormous win for employees in these vegetation, but in addition scale back the variety of animals being slaughtered yearly. It may additionally carry again the Obama administration’s “animal welfare rule,” which imposed larger requirements for natural farms.

The Trump administration has additionally finalized quite a few guidelines increasing fishing (together with loosening restrictions meant to stop bycatch of the endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna) and increasing looking (equivalent to of predators like Alaskan wolves, and of grizzly bears) that animal advocates wish to see reversed.

Eric Baradat/AFP by way of Getty Photographs

Jonathan Lovvorn, college co-director of Yale’s Regulation, Ethics, and Animal Program, tells me he’d wish to see Biden “concern an [executive order] directing USDA, EPA, and different businesses to catalog all of the regulatory and enforcement exemptions at the moment bestowed on manufacturing facility farms, and to develop a regulatory motion plan to revive environmental, labor, animal welfare, and local weather accountability to this business.”

Particularly, Lovvorn additionally highlights the necessity to incorporate animal agriculture, which accounts for an enormous chunk of greenhouse fuel emissions, into Biden’s local weather insurance policies, together with by itemizing emissions from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, the technical acronym for manufacturing facility farms) as pollution lined by the Clear Air Act. He’d additionally wish to see a Biden government order halting express authorities help for the development or enlargement of any new CAFOs.

Each Lovvorn and Leah Garcés, president of the animal safety group Mercy for Animals, name for Biden to direct the USDA to interpret the Humane Slaughter Act, a 1958 regulation that, whereas poorly enforced, nonetheless offers priceless protections to cattle and pigs, in order that it applies to poultry for the primary time.

For extra on what Biden can do to handle manufacturing facility farming, see my piece right here.

Postal banking

Many advocates and students, together with Biden transition adviser and UC Irvine regulation professor Mehrsa Baradaran, have been pushing for years for america Postal Service to make use of its authority underneath current regulation to supply retail financial institution accounts. The American Postal Employees Union has aggressively pushed for the concept in its negotiations with USPS, and it’s one of many Biden-Sanders unity job drive suggestions from this previous summer season.

The thought is to supply free, or at the very least extraordinarily low-cost, banking companies to individuals at the moment exterior the mainstream banking sector. Hundreds of thousands of People are un- or underbanked, resulting from both alternative or lack of entry. Overdraft charges, “month-to-month upkeep charges,” and different expenses could make retaining even a primary checking account at a serious financial institution a burden, particularly since these charges are largely paid by low-income individuals.

Megan Jelinger/SOPA Photographs/LightRocket by way of Getty Photographs

The push for postal banking has largely come by way of laws like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Postal Banking Act, which might be mixed with related proposals to permit all People to create checking accounts on the Federal Reserve (maybe the Put up Workplace might be the retail interface to Fed accounts, say).

However as Bryce Covert notes within the American Prospect’s Day One bundle, an aggressive Postal Service management may make some strikes on this course by itself. This might require Biden appointing and confirming sufficient nominees to the Postal Service’s Board of Governors that might change the postmaster normal, Louis DeJoy, with a postmaster dedicated to implementing postal banking. There are three vacancies on the board at the moment, one seat that vacates in December 2021, and two that vacate in December 2022, giving Biden the power to fill it with pro-postal banking governors throughout his first time period.

The USPS’s Workplace of the Inspector Basic in 2014 floated a number of concepts for the way the service may check out postal banking with out new laws, like providing a checking account-like “Postal Card” that might be loaded and reloaded with money or test deposits. A 2006 regulation limits the Postal Service from launching new, non-mail companies, and might be used to problem such initiatives; in the end, laws can be a sounder footing for postal banking than unilateral Postal Service motion. However Biden does have choices to get artistic right here ought to he select.

Cracking down on Wall Road

The manager department has in depth discretion in terms of regulating the monetary business, each resulting from provisions in 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act and from preexisting securities regulation. And particularly with the Trump-appointed head of the Securities and Trade Fee resigning to make room for a Biden appointee, Biden and his workforce may use their authority both timidly (by retaining current regulation and even deregulating for most popular sectors like group banks) or extensively (as much as and together with breaking apart megabanks like Goldman Sachs or Citigroup).

Graham Steele, a former senior aide to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the rating Democrat on the banking committee, outlined what an aggressive technique would appear like in a bit for the Prospect’s Day One bundle. It consists of:

• Imposing a measurement cap on banks, utilizing the Federal Reserve’s authority underneath both Dodd-Frank or the Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Act. The regulation may comply with proposed laws by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) and break up JPMorgan Chase, Financial institution of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, in addition to the insurers Prudential, MetLife, and AIG. This can be a pretty unlikely and excessive choice, however one with some help throughout the Democratic Social gathering.
• The Dodd-Frank Act required giant banks to arrange plans, colloquially referred to as “dwelling wills,” for his or her orderly and secure dissolution within the occasion of a disaster; the concept was to keep away from a repeat of the chaos of Bear Stearns’ and Lehman Brothers’ collapses in 2008. These “dwelling wills” might be used to drive main banks to divest a few of their traces of enterprise, in order that they shrink and grow to be much less highly effective. FDIC and the Federal Reserve collectively issued the “dwelling wills” guidelines and will take the lead on rulemaking right here.
• Having the Federal Reserve use the Financial institution Holding Firm Act of 1956 to drive giant banks to divest main components of their enterprise if the financial institution is taken into account not well-managed or threatening to the security or stability of the monetary system.
• Having the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Forex and the Federal Reserve restrict the definition of “banking” to get megabanks out of commodities like electrical energy and oil and to restrict their capacity to commerce complicated derivatives (just like the credit-default obligations, credit-default swaps, and so on. that contributed to the 2008-2009 monetary disaster).
• Utilizing the SEC to extra meaningfully reform rankings businesses and get rid of the perverse incentive of getting the issuer of derivatives pay for his or her score (which may result in dangerous derivatives being rated as secure).
• Utilizing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted within the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, to extra aggressively prosecute and imprison monetary executives to make sure particular person accountability.

The upshot is that the US has some extremely highly effective legal guidelines for regulating the banking business, each due to Dodd-Frank’s passage and predating it. The query is how aggressively the Biden administration needs to implement these legal guidelines.

You’ll be able to learn extra in Steele’s story right here.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP by way of Getty Photographs

One thought Steele doesn’t contact on is banning inventory buybacks, by which public corporations repurchase their very own shares from buyers. These grow to be an more and more standard approach for firms to reward shareholders. They face a decrease tax burden than conventional dividends (particularly after the 2017 tax cuts), they usually can enhance share costs. However as Vox’s Emily Stewart has defined, they’ve critical prices. They will trigger firms to prioritize the short-run pursuits of shareholders above long-run development, they usually can divert funds from each wage will increase for employees and R&D/funding in new merchandise.

Fortunately, if Biden and his SEC chair need to battle inventory buybacks, there’s a easy repair: repeal rule 10b-18, the company’s 1982 rule that legalized buybacks within the first place. Earlier than 10b-18, buybacks had been thought of per se inventory manipulation and had been banned. Repealing 10b-18 would return to that coverage regime. Firms may nonetheless reward shareholders by way of (higher-taxed) dividends, however in doing so they might incentive holding on to inventory for longer relatively than speculating.

Cracking down on monopoly

America’s main antitrust regulation, the Sherman Antitrust Act, was handed in 1890, however how aggressively it’s enforced, and in opposition to whom, has different loads over the previous 130 years.

It could be unattainable to provide a full account of all of the doable antitrust actions that the sturdy and vocal anti-monopoly motion has known as on the chief department to have interaction in, however listed below are a number of:

Sandeep Vaheesan, authorized director on the Open Markets Institute and a outstanding anti-monopoly voice, has an extended and extra detailed checklist on the Prospect.

Increasing entry to well being care

Vox’s Dylan Scott has seemed into what Biden can do on well being care with government energy. On the very least, Biden will cease the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the Reasonably priced Care Act (as an example, by lowering spending on outreach). He’ll doubtless additionally roll again the Trump administration’s efforts to encourage states to undertake work necessities for Medicaid. However there are some greater alternatives, Scott explains:

Each center-left well being coverage knowledgeable I spoke with flagged one administrative motion that Biden may take that may prolong well being protection to 1,000,000 individuals or extra: fixing the “household glitch” within the Reasonably priced Care Act. …

In short: Someplace between 2 million and 6 million People have been deemed ineligible for premium subsidies that may assist them buy an Obamacare insurance coverage plan due to an Obama-era regulation.

The ACA doesn’t permit an individual to qualify for premium subsidies if they’ve a proposal of reasonably priced medical health insurance from their employer. The IRS underneath Obama concluded that the members of the family of the one that will get employer-sponsored protection additionally don’t qualify for subsidies, even when an employer plan can be way more costly for the members of the family than it’s for the employee, as is commonly the case. …

Democrats have proposed fixing the household glitch by way of laws, although that appears unlikely if Republicans management the Senate. However left-leaning coverage and authorized specialists imagine a Biden administration may merely rewrite the IRS regulation that created the glitch and make these individuals eligible for protection.

And that’s removed from the one large well being care motion Biden may take.

There’s a lengthy want checklist of different administrative adjustments Biden may make to enhance well being protection. He may ease federal guidelines about taking again cash from people who find themselves discovered to have obtained too large a subsidy once they file their taxes. He may improve the oversight of personal insurance coverage brokers. A Biden administration may set up a particular enrollment interval for individuals to join ACA protection, which Trump has refused to do throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

However the most probably venue for innovation that might insure extra individuals can be a state waiver program created by Obamacare referred to as 1332 … States have large concepts for what they may suggest underneath a 1332 waiver with the Biden administration in energy: a public choice, or supplier rate-setting, or varied proposals to chop drug prices.

For extra, see Scott’s full story right here.