When Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 had surpassed 400,000, businesses were closing at a staggering rate, the American economy was in a grim place, and outgoing President Donald Trump had just incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Four years later, Biden will leave the White House as a single-term president, while Trump, now the president-elect, is ready to replace Biden on Jan. 20—and assume control of a country whose economy has been reignited. In an op-ed for The American Prospect on Monday, Biden reflected 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 emphasized his key priorities: revitalizing struggling communities, creating well-paying jobs, and strengthening U.S. economic leadership around the world. He highlighted the success of significant legislation like his bipartisan infrastructure law, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act, which “together mark the most significant investment in the United States since the New Deal.”
But his work isn’t over yet. With a little over a month in his presidency, Biden is focusing on four primary areas, according to Bloomberg: artificial intelligence, clemency, student loan forgiveness, and land protection.
In a memo addressing the priorities, which was released over the weekend, White House communications director Ben LaBolt did not specify the action to be taken on AI. However, Biden will award new funding via CHIPS.
Biden will sign new commutations and pardons, which the White House has previously said will focus on people whom the Trump administration might persecute. This follows Biden enacting the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history: pardoning 39 people from serving sentences and granting commutations to about 1,500 individuals placed on house arrest during the COVID-19 pandemic who served for at least one year.
In the most high-profile case, Biden announced on Dec. 1 that he had signed a pardon for his son Hunter Biden, who had pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses.
Last, the memo explained how Biden would further protect lands and water.
Climate change is one of the big policy topics that the Trump administration is said to be significantly 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,” according to the memo.
LaBolt also pointed out how a president’s legacy was felt even long after they’d left office and that Biden and Harris’ administration successes would continue 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 so far, Democrats like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and outgoing Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri spent the past month advocating for Biden to permit the national archivist to sign the Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution, enshrining protections for women and LGBTQ+ individuals, each of whom will face threat under the incoming Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill has prioritized confirming judges.
Biden, however, flexed his executive muscle by insisting he’d use his veto power not to sign the JUDGES Act, should it pass the House and land on his desk. This bill, if passed and signed by the president, would give Trump power over 22 new judicial appointments.
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