The president has held affable meetings with Republican senators, only to opt for bills that could be passed without them. Those who hoped Biden would produce a renaissance of bipartisanship have been disappointed too. That narrow focus is one of the reasons for Biden’s success (unlike Trump, whose attention span was notoriously short), but it has produced frustration among progressives who hoped for more help. Other Democratic priorities - immigration reform, gun control, a $15 minimum wage - have received moral support, but not much more. Here’s another way Biden’s restoration of New Deal-style government has been limited: The new president’s energy has focused relentlessly on four priorities - the pandemic, the economy, climate change and race relations. “We’ll know how durable this is when we see the fate of the infrastructure bill.” “These have been emergency measures, justified by the pandemic,” noted Elaine Kamarck, a Brookings Institution scholar of the presidency. Unlike FDR’s New Deal laws, its programs - notably the family tax credit that promises to cut child poverty in half - won’t last a single generation unless the president persuades Congress to extend them. More important, while Biden’s relief bill is enormous in terms of dollars, most of its emergency provisions are only temporary. But for all Biden’s unexpected boldness, his record doesn’t reach Rooseveltian standards.įDR passed 15 major pieces of legislation in his first 100 days Biden has passed exactly one. If Biden were simply being compared with his immediate predecessor, he’d be declared the winner of the 100-day race. And his approval in public opinion polls stands at about 54%, a higher level than his predecessor ever touched.
He has proposed a $2.3-trillion infrastructure plan. He promised COVID relief, and managed to push a massive $1.9-trillion bill through Congress without a vote to spare. He promised to deliver 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in his first 100 days when that proved too easy, he doubled the goal to 200 million (and reached it). Soon enough, however, Trump disavowed his own self-proclaimed three-month deadline as a “ridiculous standard,” while at the same time insisting: “I’ve done more than any other president in the first 100 days.”īiden, too, pledged quick action.
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