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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBiden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency
Biden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency
vision 2020 6:00 A.M.
Biden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency He thinks hell survive Tara Reades accusation. But he knows he cant be an average-Joe Democrat anymore.
By Gabriel Debenedetti
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Biden will presumably spend that time developing a detailed map of what will be necessary come Inauguration Day. Long before the pandemic, he described a range of actions hed take on day one, from rejoining the Paris climate agreement to signing executive orders on ethics, and he cited other matters, like passing the Equality Act for LGBTQ protections, as top priorities. Already his recovery ambitions have grown to include plans that would flex the muscles of big government harder than any program in recent history. To date, the federal government has spent more than $2 trillion on the coronavirus stimulus nearly three times what it approved in 2009. Biden wants more spending. A hell of a lot bigger, hes said, whatever it takes. He has argued that, even if youre inclined to worry about the deficit, massive public investment is the only thing capable of growing the economy enough so the deficit doesnt eat you alive. He has talked about funding immense green enterprises and larger backstop proposals from cities and states and sending more relief checks to families. He has urged immediate increases in virus and serology testing, proposing the implementation of a Pandemic Testing Board in the style of FDRs War Production Board and has called for investments in an Apollo-like moonshot for a vaccine and treatment. And he floated both the creation of a 100,000-plus worker Public Health Jobs Corps and the doubling of the number of OSHA investigators to protect employees amid the pandemic. If he were president now, he said in March, he would demand paid emergency sick leave for anyone in need and mandate that no one would have to pay for coronavirus testing or treatment. As the crisis deepened, he said he would forgive federal student-loan debt $10,000 per person, minimum and add $200 a month to Social Security checks.
This is all only what he believes should be done now before he even ascends to the presidency; by then, he thinks, the country could be in a much darker hole than it is today, presumably requiring even more federal investment and intervention. David Kessler, who led the Food and Drug Administration under both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and has been speaking with Biden regularly about the crisis, recently told me the former vice-president understands that until we have a vaccine or a therapeutic entity that can be used as a preventative, the virus is still going to be with us and that were going to constantly be putting out mini-epidemics. Biden, he said, has a very considerable grasp of what a realistic future holds. He paused. It is not rose colored.
And while 2009 shows that spending unprecedented amounts of money alone doesnt necessarily make a presidency transformational, the pandemic and the economic collapse it has produced have expanded Bidens sense of not just how much relief will be required but what will be possible to accomplish as part of that recovery. Presidential campaigns typically produce many more policy proposals than they ever expect theyll have the political capital to execute thats why the more pressing question is often not what a candidate wishes but what he or she will prioritize in the window of opportunity that usually slams permanently shut in the first midterm elections. Trump accomplished one big-ticket priority: tax cuts. Obama managed two: the stimulus, with a filibusterproof 60-vote Senate majority, and, barely, Obama-care. While its impossible to tell where the country is headed, Bidens camp is in the disorienting position of scaling up its laundry list of proposals to match the ambition, and the political appetite, he thinks the American people desperate for relief will have in January.
Bidens long platform has grown in recent months as the crisis has deepened. In early May, for example, his campaign detailed a long list of reforms specifically aimed at helping black Americans, like expanding tax credits used by African-American small-business owners and establishing a $100 billion affordable-housing fund, noting that the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 have shined a light on and cruelly exacerbated the disparities long faced by African-Americans. And in the weeks before the lockdowns set in, Biden was closing out the Democratic primary in part by shifting left. He embraced Elizabeth Warrens bankruptcy proposal, long a contentious subject between the two of them. And though he hasnt signed up for Bernie Sanderss Medicare for All or free-college plans, he moved toward Sanders on some student-loan-debt and health-care-funding policies and arranged six working groups of advisers to both camps to tackle issues like immigration. Once he began talking about a coronavirus recovery, he also started signaling more immediate ambitions on climate, including in his multiple conversations with Washington governor Jay Inslee. Hes totally understood the centrality of a clean-energy plan, said Inslee.
Widely seen as a cautious, tradition-bound pol and intuitive centrist within the Democratic fold, Biden stopped his economic advisers in their tracks one morning in late April. On one end of the call, the economists discussed parallels between the landscape Biden might inherit in January and the devastated one of 2009. Eleven years ago, the newly elected vice-president oversaw the implementation of historic stimulus funding, and these days Biden is fond of bringing up his Great Recessionera work because of the similar effort required today and to remind voters of this experience. But now, he said into the phone, it was time they expanded their thinking. Sure, massive gobs of federal financial help have already been approved unlike in 2008, he pointed out but that still wont be enough. Not while the magnitude of this crisis dwarfs the last one. His advisers agreed: If they were going to talk about lessons from history, their future calls might as well dive into the Great Depression and World War II.
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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/joe-biden-presidential-plans.html
GreenPartyVoter
(72,377 posts)blm
(113,052 posts)She wanted them to make structural changes in 2009 that would have a more stabilizing effect on future economies, but, others on the task force were more cautious. This statement from Biden sounds to like hes realizing how right Warren was then and now.
Very hopeful.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Eko
(7,282 posts)pamdb
(1,332 posts)But first HE HAS TO GET ELECTED!!!!!
It makes me nervous to hear people, including Joe, talk like he's got the election in the bag. Bets are still being placed
on the money people if the economy improves at all, trump pulling it out.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)the image Trump is trying to sell of a sleepy, bumbling Biden.
I do understand your cautious impulse though!
ffr
(22,669 posts)But also fix all the things they broke, destroyed, did away with, and rehire.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)fixing your typo
JudyM
(29,236 posts)Bayard
(22,063 posts)Tom Rinaldo
(22,912 posts)We are in a once in a century moment, and Joe gets it
aidbo
(2,328 posts)pecosbob
(7,538 posts)We need someone able to reform the federal government so as to survive tea-party like GOP monkey-wrenching.
AllaN01Bear
(18,191 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,080 posts)IronLionZion
(45,433 posts)based on his experience rebuilding the economy after Bush destroyed it. There seems to be a pattern here. And he'll have experienced people from the Obama administration advising him instead of the crooks Trump has bungling everything.
randr
(12,412 posts)let alone put them back together. Biden is the best choice for the task at hand.
Initech
(100,068 posts)Or we elect Trump again and we face 4 years of darkness, death and destruction. I know which one I would pick!
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,342 posts)The author of the article could have left out the "Tara Reade" scam.
Auggie
(31,168 posts)There aren't further political aspirations after being POTUS -- no "re-election" worries sans a second term, but at 82, would he really want that?
He could leave a legacy that would indeed rival FDR.
DownriverDem
(6,228 posts)stop attacking Biden and saying he has no plans.
woodsprite
(11,913 posts)start a rebuilding coalition, then add in some outstanding members of business, society, maybe some House and Senate members (who's Dem appointments would be safe in their states) and build, build, build. Weed out all the rats that Trump&Co have planted deep in our government. Would Cuomo be up for head of FEMA? I'm really impressed with his demeanor and how he's handled the crisis in New York and in building the coalition of states. We know there is another round or more of Corona in our future, most likely additional diseases, hurricanes, etc.
stopwastingmymoney
(2,041 posts)In a Secretary of State Barack Obama?
woodsprite
(11,913 posts)WhiskeyGrinder
(22,333 posts)Sorry, I thought that was the standard response to such assertions.
shockey80
(4,379 posts)Big changes are coming.
peggysue2
(10,828 posts)He is exactly the right individual for the series of crises we're facing. It will take a bold approach to pull things together. Joe Biden has the mettle, the insight and he has a growing team of like-minded people and expertise to do what needs to be done, reversing the deliberate damage that Trump and his enablers have wreaked, domestically and beyond. And he's indicated he will pull from all sectors in the effort, as long as everyone is on the same page, ready to make the necessary changes, the institutional improvements.
For anyone who doubted Biden's visionary side, this is a taste of it. And this is why November will be a do-or-die moment.
Buckeyeblue
(5,499 posts)I'm curious what Republicans will do in the coming months. If they think losing the presidency and senate are inevitable, they may sit back and do nothing, so in the 2022 mid-terms they can lay all the blame at Biden's feet.
BComplex
(8,049 posts)and do something to make sure these "news" organizations can no longer lie and spread conspiracy-theories to a bunch of unhinged, gun-toting nutjobs.
He has to get a justice department that will lock up all the criminals from trump's administration.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)I would hope this would have started quite some time ago.