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      How Biden’s firm line with Republicans draws on lesson of Obama’s mistakes

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      Joe Biden started his presidential campaign with promises to be a unifying force in Washington who would help lawmakers come together to achieve bipartisan reform. But over his first 100 days in office, Biden’s message to Republicans in Congress has been closer to this: get on board or get out of my way.This willingness to go it alone if necessary appears to be a hard-won lesson from the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Democrats negotiated with Republicans on major bills only to have them vote against the final proposals.It has also prompted some – especially on the left of the Democratic party – to make early comparisons between Biden and Obama that favor the current president as a more dynamic, determined and ruthless political force for progressive change than his old boss.Just three months into his presidency, Biden has already signed the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package, which did not attract a single Republican vote in Congress. Delivering his first presidential address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Biden signaled he was willing to take a similar approach to infrastructure if necessary.“I’d like to meet with those who have ideas that are different,” the president said of his infrastructure plan. “I welcome those ideas. But the rest of the world is not waiting for us. I just want to be clear: from my perspective, doing nothing is not an option.”Even though he has much smaller majorities in Congress than Obama did in 2009, Biden has decided to take a much more audacious approach. The Biden strategy centers on acting boldly and quickly to advance his legislative agenda. And if he has to abandon bipartisanship along the way, so be it.The numbers behind Biden’s proposals tell the story of this bold strategy.While the 2009 stimulus bill that Obama signed into law amid the financial crisis cost about $787bn, Biden’s coronavirus relief bill came in at $1.9tn. The president’s two infrastructure proposals, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, would cost a collective $4tn.The size and scope of these policies have signaled that Democrats are intent on learning from the Obama-era stimulus bill talks, when Republicans successfully negotiated to get many provisions taken out of the final legislation. Democrats have blamed the watered-down legislation for their massive losses in the 2010 midterms.“I don’t just blame Obama. I could blame all of us – everybody,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, recently told writer Anand Giridharadas.Schumer said Democrats had made two crucial errors in allowing Republicans to “dilute” the stimulus bill and drag out negotiations over the Affordable Care Act. “We’re not going to make either of those mistakes,” Schumer said.Republicans are taking notice of Democrats’ new no-nonsense approach. In his response to Biden’s address on Wednesday, the Republican senator Tim Scott accused the president of further dividing the country by passing major legislation without bipartisan support in Congress.“President Biden promised you a specific kind of leadership. He promised to unite a nation, to lower the temperature, to govern for all Americans, no matter how we voted,” Scott said. “But three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further apart.”Biden and his team have insisted their proposals are bipartisan, pointing to surveys showing the coronavirus relief package enjoys the support of a broad majority of Americans, including many Republicans. They accuse Republican lawmakers of being out of touch with the needs of their constituents.“The most game-changing change in the dynamic that this White House has done is redefining bipartisanship to mean among the public and not among DC politicians,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.Green and other progressive strategists expressed hope that these widely popular policies will pay dividends in next year’s midterms, allowing Democrats to avoid their disastrous showing in 2010.“There are two huge regrets of the Obama administration,” said Reed Hundt, a member of Obama’s transition team and the author of A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama’s Defining Decisions.“We didn’t spend enough to get the economy to be fully recovered by 2010, and we disastrously lost the House,” Hundt said. “And regret number two is we never made up for it over eight years.”Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, said the 2009 stimulus negotiations demonstrated the potential danger of prioritizing bipartisanship over progressive change.“It’s a lesson learned because, if you don’t push far enough on a major issue everyone cares about, then the compromise working with Republicans ends up being something that doesn’t satisfy the base,” Allison said.But Allison also made a point to emphasize that Biden is operating under much different circumstances than Obama was when he became president. Most notably, Biden arrived in office on the heels of Donald Trump, who made hardly any attempts to win over Democrats in Congress.“It’s really, really different times. We didn’t have the experience of a Trump,” Allison said of Obama’s early presidency. “There wasn’t quite that sense of urgency, whereas I think now there’s that expectation we got to get things done, and we need to get them done this year.”Obama also faced the unique challenge of being a barrier-breaker as the first African American president. Obama has acknowledged that the hurdles he faced in making history affected his ability to negotiate with Republicans, such as the Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, and even affected his choice of Biden as his vice-president.Obama writes in his memoir, A Promised Land, “One of the reasons I’d chosen Joe to act as an intermediary – in addition to his Senate experience and legislative acumen – was my awareness that in McConnell’s mind, negotiations with the vice-president didn’t inflame the Republican base in quite the same way that any appearance of cooperation with (Black, Muslim socialist) Obama was bound to do.”Over his first 100 days in office, Biden seems to have used his image as the centrist “Uncle Joe” to his advantage – something that Obama obviously could not do.“There’s probably a large range of things that, had the exact policies been proposed by a President Bernie Sanders, they would face a lot more obstacles,” Green said. But he was quick to add, “There’s also a range of things that Biden will not propose that a more progressive president would have proposed.”John Paul Mejia, a spokesperson for the climate group Sunrise Movement, echoed that point, saying Biden still had a lot of work to do to meet the demands of the progressive coalition that helped put him in office.“While there is some sigh of relief for the president accomplishing or beginning to accomplish some popular demands, that’s really the floor that we’re examining right now,” Mejia said. “In order to truly deliver to the fullest extent of the crises that we face right now, we need a lot more.”On infrastructure specifically, Mejia said Biden should aim to spend much more money to combat climate change and build a green economy. While the president’s American Jobs Plan calls for $2.3tn in spending over eight years, Mejia and other progressives, including congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say the US should be looking to invest $10tn over 10 years.While Ocasio-Cortez has applauded Biden’s legislative approach so far, she has also emphasized that the president – and Americans in general – should not forget the activists who pushed him on major policy and helped get him elected.“Not enough credit is given to the countless activists, organizers and advocates whose relentless work is why we are even hearing anything about universal childcare, white supremacy as terrorism, labor and living wages tonight,” Ocasio-Cortez said after Biden’s speech on Wednesday. “Yet we cannot stop until it’s done. Keep going.” More

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      The Guardian view on Biden’s 100 days: going big, but not big enough | Editorial

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      Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office signalled that the future does not have to be a rerun of the past. The US president’s speech to Congress this week made it clear that Trumpism was a warning from history, a reminder that no republic is guaranteed to last. The US remains in danger – its decline accelerated by an iniquitous economic model, and by leaders unable or unwilling to remedy it. It is a relief to find in the White House a president who wants to bridge divisions rather than widen them. Mr Biden should be praised for saying he will stop the rot and recognising the challenge to democracy posed by autocracy. But his response risks being undone by an obsession with containing non-existent fiscal risks.The Biden White House proposes spending $4trn, with about half the money used to rewrite the social contract. The rest will create jobs, with infrastructure investments to repurpose the post-Covid economy for a zero-carbon world. The problem is not that money is being spent to fix a broken society. Neither is it wrong to ask the rich to pay their fair share of tax. The problem is that Mr Biden says spending must be balanced by tax rises or savings from other government programmes.This is a self-imposed and self-defeating constraint. It seems bad economics to pay for every dollar invested in early childhood education when each greenback yields $7.30 in benefits. A number of centrist Democrats have already signalled their opposition to the proposed tax hikes. If Mr Biden wanted cash, he could back the Internal Revenue Service to go after the $1tn in unpaid taxes every year. With a razor-thin Democratic majority in the US Senate, there is a risk that privileging arbitrary fiscal limits will lead to laws not being enacted or spending being pared back to match reduced revenues.Mr Biden’s intention to bust a failed economic paradigm is a good one. It would be a scandal if it were sacrificed on the altar of budget neutrality. The threat to liberal democracy is not from fiscal incontinence but political polarisation. America has spent decades running up large deficits with no adverse macroeconomic consequences. In Washington, a debt crisis always seems to be coming. Yet it never arrives. The nation is increasingly endangered by growing levels of inequality, financial instability and ecological calamity. The Gilded Age looks egalitarian compared with the emerging concentration of riches. Either democracy must be renewed by freeing the state from ideological restrictions or wealth is likely to cement a less democratic regime.It makes little sense for Mr Biden to elevate balanced budgets when the country faces existential choices, a point recently made by two Obama-era White House economic advisers. No one doubts the sincerity of the Biden team. The question is whether they have subordinated the scale of the crises to congressional politicking. Columbia University’s Adam Tooze pointed out that the president’s climate spending amounts to about 0.5% of US GDP, an amount 10 times smaller than that required to decarbonise the economy. The economist Stephanie Kelton wrote that to accommodate such large expenditures, the Biden administration “would have to develop a robust plan with a focus on containing inflationary pressures”. These are the arguments that Mr Biden should be having with his party, not whether the wealthiest ought to pay for anti-poverty programmes.It is better to let the government’s fiscal balance settle to whatever level is required to deal with the multiple emergencies the US faces, given the spending and portfolio decisions of the private sector. It is not the case that the government’s ability to spend is constrained by budgetary accounting or temporary while interest rates remain low. The US Federal Reserve’s bond-purchasing programmes can control yields. Mr Biden’s economic team understands that a strong economy benefits the bottom half of America most. However, his spending plans threaten to centre the debate on reducing the deficit rather than rescuing the country. More

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      ‘We’re not sworn enemies’: Liz Cheney defends herself for fist-bumping Biden

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      Liz Cheney, the embattled No 3 ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, has been forced to defend herself for having fist-bumped Joe Biden during his address to Congress this week.Cheney, who has come under sustained attack from within her own party for having been one of very few Republicans to criticize Donald Trump for inciting the 6 January Capitol insurrection, posted on Twitter that she strongly disagreed with the Democratic president’s policies.“But when the President reaches out to greet me in the chamber of the US House of Representatives, I will always respond in a civil, respectful & dignified way. We’re different political parties. We’re not sworn enemies. We’re Americans.”The by now notorious fist bump, that lasted less than two seconds, came as the president was making his way to the podium before his first speech to a joint chamber of Congress on Wednesday. Despite the fact that Biden made similar gestures to many around him, his contact with such a high-ranking and controversial Republican sent sparks flying.“The video of Biden fist-bumping Cheney is going to be used by every Trumpist who wants Cheney to lose her seat next year as evidence that she is a Republican In Name Only (Rino) and a sellout of conservative principles,” remarked CNN’s Chris Cillizza.Sure enough, the moment was gleefully seized by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. “So glad she’s in the GOP leadership,” he snarked. “I guess they wanted to be more inclusive and put Democrats in there too?!?”The elder Donald Trump has relentlessly baited Cheney after she became one of only 10 Republicans to vote for his impeachment for inciting violent insurrection on the US Capitol on 6 January. This week he slammed her as a “warmongering fool”.With Trump keeping up the pressure, Cheney is reported to be facing grumbles from inside the congressional Republican group about her leadership position. Relations with the top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, are stressed, with McCarthy remaining a Trump acolyte while Cheney continues to criticize the former president.In her home state of Wyoming, Cheney is also facing a primary challenge from several local Republicans seeking to oust her in fealty to Trump. Cheney told Punchbowl News that she was confident she would survive the contest and that she was standing firm.“Anybody who wants to get in that race and who wants to do it on the basis of debating me about whether or not President Trump should have been impeached, I’ll have that debate every day of the week,” she said. More

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      Were Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office a success? Our panel’s verdict

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      Kate Aronoff: Biden can play nice, or he can tackle the climate crisis – not bothThe bar for climate leadership set by the Trump administration was low enough to trip over. Joe Biden hasn’t tripped in its first hundred days. He’s cleared the bar decisively with a new emissions target and a pledge to spend roughly $1 trillion on climate priorities over the next eight years, and by a bigger margin than just about anyone would have expected from a career centrist. But with a world “on the verge of the abyss,” as UN Secretary-General António Guterres summarized recently, that bar is the wrong one to be watching. That Biden has consistently framed climate action as an engine of job creation and a massive investment opportunity is a welcome corrective to rhetoric about shrinking personal carbon footprints and technocratic tweaks. Yet spending just 0.5% of GDP each year to reduce emissions, as the American Jobs Plan intends, is nowhere near enough to take on an existential threat. It’s also worth remembering that, for now, even those modest commitments are just rhetoric: nothing has passed. Neither will the climate crisis be solved by simply throwing money at the industries of tomorrow. For a decent shot of capping warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the 2020 Production Gap Report finds that global fossil fuel production will have to decline 6% each year through 2030. It’s currently on track to increase by 2% annually. US natural gas production – which pours prolific amounts of heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere – could grow to record levels in 2022 as fuel demand surges back. Biden can play nice with deficit hawks and the fossil fuel industry, or he can tackle the climate crisis at the speed and scale required. Not both.Simon Balto: Biden’s efforts are laudable but insufficientInheriting the US presidency from the most incapable person to ever hold the office was never going to make for an easy job. That would be true under any circumstances, let alone under circumstances defined by the overlapping crises of a global pandemic, entrenched racism and a climate on the brink.Joe Biden’s administration deserves credit for its work in inching the country toward managing the Covid-19 crisis. While much remains to be done – particularly in ensuring equitable vaccine access – the US is inarguably in a better position on the pandemic front than it was on 19 January.The results of Biden’s presidency elsewhere are, so far, significantly more mixed. Rolling back some Trump-era immigration restrictions is a good thing, but maintaining Trump’s catastrophically inhumane limits on the entry-access to the US of refugees and asylum – seekers isn’t magically more humane just because Biden isn’t Trump. On matters of racial justice, in particular surrounding the policing crisis, Biden seems more or less satisfied to return to the timidly liberal approach of former president Barack Obama, offering justice department investigations and further investments into policing when the only solution to epidemic and racist police violence is to reimagine public safety entirely. Finally, Biden’s approach to the climate crisis is the most significant presidentially supported climate plan in US history, but, as supporters of the Green New Deal have made clear, it’s still insufficient to meet the magnitude of that crisis.Biden’s successes in steering the country toward a post-pandemic reality are laudable. His embrace of some aspects of the Green New Deal demonstrates the ability of progressives to reframe policy debates in important ways and see them adopted into the mainstream discourse. And yet, his refusal to be more ambitious in tackling many of our other shared crises demonstrates the work still to be done.Moira Donegan: We need to raise our expectationsExpectations were low. When Joe Biden entered the White House in January, the nation was still reeling from the 6 January insurrection. For a moment, it was unclear whether the transition of power could be carried through without more violence. Just getting him sworn in seemed like a success.Once he was in office, Biden offered Americans, weary from the Trump years, some much-longed-for stability. His Covid stimulus bill was of a size appropriate to meet the scale of need. Vaccine distribution and administration, a logistical nightmare under Trump, ramped up rapidly once adults were in charge. Shots went into arms, and the end of the pandemic has become thinkable, at least in the US. Meanwhile, Biden spoke to the nation in calm, coherent sentences, and didn’t seem to hold Americans in contempt. This was an improvement.But for all the talk during the transition of Biden’s hope to be a transformative president, his policy agenda still faces substantial obstacles. His ambitious American Jobs Act was laughed at, even by members of his own party, for classifying traditionally feminized labor as “infrastructure”; his American Families Act, geared toward helping women in the workforce, has sparked backlash from cultural conservatives, even as it falls far short of the universal childcare proposals that were put forth during the primary season. He has made nice comments about climate change and gender justice, but it remains unclear how much force he is willing to put behind those sentiments. Fortunately, the administration has shown itself amenable to pressure from the left and public shaming: they backed off a decision to maintain a Trump-era cap on refugees after public outcry from the Democratic rank and file.Understandably, Americans have so far been grading Biden on a curve. Now it’s time to raise our standards.Jill Filipovic: A return to Clintonism isn’t progressJoe Biden’s first 100 days in office illustrate the sharp distinctions between the president and his predecessor, and why politics is so dangerous when played as a game of personality and not a competition of competence. Since taking office, Biden has secured a $2tn Covid-19 relief package; recommitted the US to the Paris climate accords; planned a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans; announced a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan; revealed an ambitious infrastructure package; and rolled out a startlingly successful mass vaccination program. Trump, by contrast, spent nearly one in every five of his first 100 days on the golf course.But the issues Biden has prioritized also hint at who he is trying to keep (or get) on his side: the white working-class voters who defected from Obama to Trump, some of whom then came back to Biden. Left out are many of the issues most important to the Democratic base, including immigration and reproductive rights. With the stroke of a pen, Biden could allow many more refugees to be resettled in the US; instead, his administration initially said they would stick with the Trump numbers, before quickly walking that back and saying they’d raise numbers by May. In the meantime, though, the world’s most vulnerable people have spent unnecessary months languishing in wait, often after years or even decades of waiting. And while Biden swiftly overturned some of Trump’s worst policies on US funding of reproductive healthcare overseas, that puts his administration in the same position as Bill Clinton in the 1990s – it’s better than under Trump, but could hardly be called progress.Biden deserves much praise for all the good he has done. But he’s also made clear where he’s willing to spend his political capital – and so far, it’s not on women’s rights, immigration or racial justice.Geoffrey Kabaservice: Consensus still eludes BidenIn more normal political times, Biden’s record during his first 100 days in office wouldn’t have inspired comparisons to FDR. But in the wake of Trump’s malignant incompetence, Biden’s success in returning government to something like functionality seems, to his supporters at least, almost worthy of Mount Rushmore.In fact, Biden has kept his administration focused on his principal goals of overcoming the pandemic and reviving the economy, while also issuing a slew of executive orders reversing his predecessor’s policies. The acceleration in vaccine distribution under his watch has been the envy of other nations, and congressional passage of the $1.9tn Covid-19 relief package has helped to supercharge the economy by flooding it with cash.But Biden’s early days have also emphasized the intractability of most of the country’s problems. Covid relief passed without a single Republican vote, and the upcoming infrastructure bill seems likely to do the same. Biden’s professed love of bipartisanship hasn’t changed the underlying reality of hyper-partisanship and culture war. He can hardly claim to have restored public faith in government when a sizable fraction of that public persists in believing Trump the true winner of the 2020 election (and refusing vaccination). Friendly media coverage can’t hide the growing crisis at the border, and there’s no widespread agreement on an approach to the forces driving mass immigration (including global heating). Nor has the administration even begun to rally mass opinion behind a systemic approach to the interlinked problems of guns, crime and police violence.Biden’s first 100 days will merit comparison with FDR’s only if he can forge an FDR-like consensus. So far there is little sign of that happening.
      Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party
      Bhaskar Sunkara: Biden repudiated neoliberalism. But more is neededGovernment can change lives for the better. For years the American public was told that the economy stood alone and state intervention in it would only backfire. Now the Biden administration has repudiated that key tenet of neoliberalism in its first 100 days.The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided $1.9tn in stimulus for the US economy. More than half those funds were allocated for direct aid, including housing, unemployment and nutrition assistance, as well as childcare allowances for families.Biden also harnessed the Defense Production Act of 1950 to help with vaccine and protective equipment production. As commentator James Medlock said: “The era of ‘the era of big government is over’ is over.”But while Biden has shown a surprising willingness to partner with leftwing politicians like Bernie Sanders and respond to the demands of the moment, despite his previous deficit hawk positions, we shouldn’t overstate the transformation. The world economy is in deep crisis due to coronavirus and measures to slow its spread; there is consensus from most actors about the use of the state to revive demand and keep businesses and workers afloat. Even Trump and congressional Republicans were willing to pump money into the economy.What will happen, however, when things return to normal?Biden has not shown a willingness to prioritize the measures that could more permanently alter the unequal US economy – a $15 minimum wage failed to win support among 50 Democratic senators, and the Pro Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions, has dim prospects of passage.We might look back at the first 100 days of the Biden administration as featuring a brief moment of budgetary liberalism only to be followed the old, failed policies. That won’t only be bad for working families, it could pave the way for future demagogues of the populist right. More

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      In his first 100 days, how has Biden handled the four crises he outlined?

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      In his inaugural address on 20 January, Joe Biden declared: “We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era.”The new US president outlined four crises facing America: the coronavirus pandemic, climate, economy and racial justice. Here is an assessment of his progress on each in his first 100 days:Coronavirus pandemicIn the first and more pressing crisis, Biden has been largely successful in changing the trajectory of the pandemic. Vaccine distribution has accelerated and the White House has been active in fighting hesitancy.The administration has also made a point of celebrating its milestones for vaccinating the public – in late April the Biden team passed the 200m shot milestone.There have been some bumps. The White House had to rethink its mass-vaccination site program while Johnson & Johnson had to temporarily halt distribution of its vaccine after a tiny fraction of recipients suffered blood clots. At moments the Biden team has had to fine tune and clarify statements on proper health protocols for staving off the pandemic.Dr Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, has also gotten into proxy sparring matches with Republican elected officials over the pandemic. But if Biden’s presidency is to be judged on the pandemic, the figures speak for themselves.Jeffrey Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said at a press briefing last week: “This crucial milestone of 200m shots in less than 100 days enabled more than 52% of adults across the country to have at least one shot. That’s more than 135 million Americans who are on their way to being protected from this virus.“Importantly, seniors accounted for 80% of Covid deaths. But now, we’ve seen an 80% reduction in deaths and a 70% reduction in hospitalization among seniors, proving just how effective vaccination is in preventing death and severe disease. This significant progress in a short period of time is a direct result of our deliberate, whole-of-government, wartime effort.”But even as the Biden administration oversees the end of the pandemic, some states are still struggling with coronavirus cases. There is also the outstanding question of how the Biden administration will do in helping the rest of the world battle the pandemic. On Monday the United States announced it would start sharing its stores of AstraZeneca vaccines with other countries.Climate crisisEarly on in his presidency, Biden appointed former secretary of state John Kerry to be climate czar and elevated that to a cabinet-level position. He issued a number of executive orders reversing the Trump administration’s moves weakening car emissions and energy efficiency standards.In February, Biden restored the pricing standard for carbon to the level it was at during the Obama administration. At the time though that fell short of boosting the cost to the level some climate scientists were recommending. Later the administration increased the cost again to keep up with inflation.Last week Biden convened a summit with 40 world leaders to discuss the climate crisis. He said: “The steps our countries take between now and Glasgow [host of a UN climate change conference] will set the world up for success to protect livelihoods around the world and keep global warming at a maximum of 1.5C.“We must get on the path now in order to do that. If we do, we’ll breathe easier, literally and figuratively; we’ll create good jobs here at home for millions of Americans; and lay a strong foundation for growth for the future. And that can be your goal as well.“This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative, a moment of peril but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Time is short, but I believe we can do this. And I believe that we will do this.”Nevertheless, the Biden administration has had to grapple with trying to accomplish its climate change goals with a narrowly divided Senate. The threat of filibusters in the Senate makes it very difficult for the administration to see its policy proposals move through federal legislation.Economic recoveryCoronavirus vaccinations are up, unemployment is down and businesses are reopening. Whether he is talking about infrastructure or the climate crisis, Biden has been pushing a message hard for anyone on the left or right to disagree with: jobs, jobs, jobs.The economy added 379,000 jobs in February and 916,000 jobs in March, exceeding expectations. The unemployment rate now stands at 6%. Weekly unemployment claims have fallen to their lowest level since the pandemic began. Growth increased to 6.4% in the first quarter of 2021, up from 4.3% in the final quarter of last year.And the stock market has seen better returns in Biden’s first hundred days than under any president in the past 75 years, despite former president Donald Trump’s prophecy of a Biden crash.Promising to “build back better”, Biden moved fast to sign a $1.9tn rescue plan on 11 March. It was the biggest federal recovery effort in a generation and more than double the size of Barack Obama’s stimulus package that followed the 2008 financial crisis.The legislation, which gained no Republican votes in Congress, sent more than 150m stimulus checks to US citizens, extended unemployment benefits, expanded food assistance and boosted health insurance subsidies. Its historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit aims to cut child poverty in half.The pandemic has exacerbated inequality. The rescue plan did not include a federal $15-an-hour minimum wage but is expected to boost the incomes of the lowest 20% by 20%. After four decades of Ronald Reagan’s low tax, trickle-down economics, it marked a restoration of faith in big government.Then came a $2tn infrastructure bill, which is likely to take longer and face more significant amendments in Congress. Biden, again touting job creation, is proposing to pay for it by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28% – lower than the 35% it stood at before Trump but still a stumbling block with Republicans.In the meantime, experts predict that the US economy could grow as fast as 7% this year – a potentially strong tail wind for Democrats going into the 2022 midterm elections.Racial justice“The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer,” Biden said in his inaugural address, and he appointed a historically diverse administration that includes, in the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in cabinet.The administration vowed to embed racial equity in its policies as never before. The $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, for example, $5bn for Black farmers, and was described as the most significant legislation for this group since Civil Rights Act more than half a century ago.Biden’s first 100 days also coincided with the trial of ex-police officer Derek Chauvin, found guilty of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis. The White House is pushing for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which aims to improve police training, curb use of excessive force and end techniques such as chokeholds.It shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done“George Floyd was murdered almost a year ago,” Biden said after the Chauvin verdict. “It shouldn’t take a whole year to get this done.”The contrast from last year, when Donald Trump sided with police against Black Lives Matters supporters, was startling. In a sign of Biden’s resolve to exert federal oversight over police, the justice department launched an investigation into the Minneapolis police department.But Biden has gone back on a campaign promise to create a national police oversight commission in his first hundred days, reportedly after consulting civil rights organisations and police unions and concluding it might be used by Congress as an excuse to procrastinate.Some observers suggests that Biden, 78, is not undergoing a personal transformation so much as keeping in step with the Democratic party, which belatedly recognises racial justice as a defining issue.Rashad Robinson, president of the group Color of Change, told the New York Times: “Biden is actually being Biden by being inside of all of the ways in which the current landscape is sending him messages. That is good, but I don’t want to be classifying this as some sort of out-front radical leadership. That would really not represent everything that could be possible if we leaned in more.” More

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      Joe Biden's 100 days in office interrupted by protesters – video

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      During a speech at a drive-in rally in Duluth, Georgia, to mark 100 days in office, Joe Biden was briefly interrupted by protesters calling for an end to private prisons, a demand that Biden agreed to, saying that the US was ‘working to close all of them’.
      The president praised the conviction of Derek Chauvin, the police officer found guilty of killing George Floyd, and declared that ‘America is on the move again, choosing hope over fear, truth over lies, light over darkness’. Georgia is a particularly important state for Biden after he became the first Democrat to win there since Bill Clinton in 1992 

      ‘You changed America’: Biden marks first 100 days in Georgia – a state key to his victory More

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      Biden’s ‘transformative’ 100 days in office: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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      Despite Joe Biden only being president for a little more than three months, some are calling his tenure ‘transformative’. Jonathan Freedland and Robert Reich dissect the US leader’s first 100 days in office

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      On Wednesday Joe Biden gave his first address to a joint session of Congress, on the eve of his first 100 days in office. He promised a new era, a chance for America to heal – not only from the pandemic but from four years of Donald Trump. He announced plans to change the way the American economy works, and promised to spend trillions of dollars to help the nation recover. Anybody looking for proof of his commitment need only look at his first 100 days in office. Many are calling this three-month period “transformative”. So what will Biden do next? Jonathan and Robert share their thoughts. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More