Here we are, 100 days into a Biden presidency – that should have been a Bernie presidency if the primaries weren’t rigged.
Biden gave a speech last night. I didn’t listen to it – but I have been paying attention to what Biden has actually been doing with his presidential power and what he could be doing if he actually believed in helping the working class.
Thanks to @BidenTracking and @WaitingOnBiden on Twitter for their compilations of Biden’s actions, the following list I have pulled primarily from them. Please give them a follow to keep on tracking Biden’s actions. These lists are not comprehensive, but give a broad overview of what has happened in the last 100 days. I haven’t even mentioned racial justice, which will be covered on our next episode of Crawdads and Taters.
The Good
- A policy that sharply limits the immigrants whom ICE officers can arrest at courthouses
- Expanding a pause on federal student loan interest and collections for about 800,000 borrowers with defaulted loans and fully forgiving the student loan debt of 72,000 borrowers who were defrauded by colleges.
- Raising the minimum wage for only Federal workers to $15
- Free school lunch program for the 2021-22 school year.
- Repealing the global gag rule, which bars the federal government from offering U.S. aid to any foreign health organization that also offers or provides information on abortion services.
- Increased food stamp benefits because of the pandemic through an executive order.
- Protecting DACA through executive order
- Halting oil and gas permits in all national wildlife monuments through executive order.
- Canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline project through executive order
The Bad
- Reopening previously closed “facilities” at the southern border
- Refusing to allow journalists access to the detainment facilities at the border
- Increased deportations in spite promising there would be none for 100 days
- Increasing military equipment transfers to the police
- Proposing a $753,000,000,000 Pentagon budget
- Multiple arms deals including a $23 billion arms deal for the UAE
- Not removing remove patent barriers on Covid-19 vaccines during a global pandemic
- More corporate giveaways to health insurance companies
- Considering “filling gaps” in the US-Mexico border wall.
- Looking to extend a Trump era policy that bolsters mandatory minimum drug sentences
- Not using his power to push through a minimum wage increase to $15 in spite of campaign promises
- No student debt cancellation
- Lied about $2,000 checks
- Giving stimulus checks to 17 million less citizens than Trump
- Dozens of young Biden White House staffers have been asked to resign due to past marijuana use
- No decriminalization or legalization of marijuana
- No national shutdown allowing continued spread of COVID-19
- Weak action on climate change – no fracking ban
The Ugly
- Airstrikes on Syria
- Continued sanctions on Venezuela, new sanctions on Russia
- Lying about ending the war in Yemen
- Continuing DAPL
- Nearly his entire cabinet selection
What he could have done
Thanks to the Day One Agenda for compiling a list of what Biden actually has the power to do without congress. Here are just a few things that he could have done if he wasn’t owned by Wall Street. These items are what we could have expected from a Bernie presidency.
- Cancelled student debt with a pen stroke
- Enacted emergency Medicare for all
- Declared a climate state of emergency
- Free college for all
- End the War on Terror
- And so much more
None of this is really radical at all – other countries have free college, universal healthcare, and have declared climate emergencies. If Biden truly believed in progress, he would enact these policies. His first 100 days show that he is more interested in pleasing his corporate donors than in helping the people of the United States. This comes as no surprise to me, as I explained before the election in my reasoning why I would not vote for Biden. He has lived up to my low expectations in many cases and been worse in others. There’s nothing progressive about this administration.
Originally published by Birrion Sondahl on April 29, 2021
This post was originally published on Real Progressives.
