First 100: Biden Has Been Pushed to Deliver by Progressives and Advocates

Upending the narrative of the first 100 days.

by

It’s April 27, 2021 and welcome to First 100. You can sign up to have First 100 delivered to your email by clicking here.

The Chief

This week is that time in the presidential term where everyone decides to assess a new president’s performance, using the mile marker of the first 100 days. (Some media wags even design an entire newsletter around that somewhat arbitrary figure.) But well before we hit day 100, a narrative had set in on the center-left.

This is a popular, transformative president, the narrative goes, doing bold yet popular things, proving that good policy is good politics. Certainly, the president is popular, or as popular as a president can be in a completely polarized age. His job approval in several polls hovers a couple points above his share of the two-party vote in 2020. His policy priorities—the infrastructure package, the American Rescue Plan—are even more popular, allowing the administration to redefine bipartisanship as promoting policy preferred by Republican and Democratic voters, if not their representatives in Congress. The vaccine rollout has been a success (even if it’s slowing now), and if nothing else was accomplished that would be a signature achievement.

And yet there’s another way to look at this first 100 days of the Biden era: one where the administration has to be dragged to that place of transformation, pulled forward not just by the progressive movement but from across the spectrum of the Democratic Party. You can read this as good or bad depending on your perspective: maybe it’s bad that the Biden administration’s instincts are smaller than the moment requires, or maybe it’s good that the party’s instincts are bigger—and that the Biden team is listening to them.

Read all of our First 100 Reports

To be sure, Biden has put forward several laudable policies: leaving Afghanistan without preconditions, rejoining the Paris agreement, and just today, raising the minimum wage for federal contractor employees to $15 an hour. He has delivered on a number of campaign promises and on one big meta-policy—meeting the required level of ambition and rejecting naysayers who tried to use deficits and inflation to trim his sails—he potentially provided a lasting blueprint for Democrats. But let’s look at several other issues that have transpired over the past few days:

• In response to the tragic outbreak of COVID-19 in India, Biden’s team ignored calls for help for several days. Finally, national security adviser Jake Sullivan ended the export ban on raw materials for vaccines. Then, after weeks of prodding, Biden decided to share with India and the world dormant AstraZeneca vaccines that had been sitting in a warehouse in Baltimore.

• The administration set a deadline of March 15 for an emergency temporary workplace standard for COVID-19, then shot past that date and at one point even put the rule on hold. After pushing from Senate Democrats and labor unions, finally yesterday the Department of Labor advanced the temporary standard through the regulatory process, which means it’s still not active until after the Office of Management and Budget signs off.  

• After initially leaving out changes to health care in the American Families Plan, which will be announced in Wednesday’s speech to a joint session of Congress, the administration took a ton of heat from all factions of the party, and it finally decided to include $200 billion to extend increased subsidies for the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges (which were added for two years in the American Rescue Plan). This has not stopped the lobbying, as over 80 House Democrats spanning the ideological divide from AOC to Conor Lamb are pushing to lower the Medicare eligibility age and allow prescription drug price negotiation in Medicare, the latter a cost-reducing policy that Biden’s team has still left out.

• The Biden team’s greatest legislative accomplishment, the expanded and advanced child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan, only lasts for one year. Democrats pressured Biden to make that permanent, but he rejected that, citing the high cost, and instead will reportedly only extend it to 2025 in tomorrow’s announcement. Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has deviated from that script, today introducing a family care bill that makes the CTC permanent.

• The Biden team needed only to sign a piece of paper to increase the refugee cap and allow tens of thousands of migrants in deplorable conditions to settle in the United States. Biden promised to do it and briefed Congress, then changed his mind (reportedly it was his decision) and left the refugees stuck on the tarmack. After tremendous pushback from all corners of the party, Biden relented—but only to say that he would set a new refugee cap by May 15.

And I haven’t gotten into student debt cancellation, or marijuana legalization, or what’s going on with the Yemen war, or more.

This is a defined trend, and I’m willing to spell it out, even if it doesn’t get me onto calls with Ron Klain. On a number of key areas, Biden’s team has not been the one with the boundless ambition. They’ve reneged or stayed silent on a number of items, only moving when enough pressure has been created by the political system to make inaction impossible. And often those reluctant moves are half-steps: raw materials and AstraZeneca vaccines but no IP waiver on vaccine patents, or ACA exchange subsidies but no drug price reform, or so on. Even on the minimum wage increase for federal contractors, there’s much more that can be done, as we’ve outlined in our Executive Action Tracker. Biden can ban contractors from forced employee arbitration agreements; he can require them to maintain neutrality in union organizing; he can mandate replacement contractors to rehire the previous firm’s workers. None of this has been done.

As we’re moving into an uncertain area on legislative policy, this is problematic. Joe Manchin wants the infrastructure package whittled down to next to nothing with the participation of Republicans. As his vote is critical, there’s simply no guarantee that anything monumental will come of the infrastructure bill; the return of earmarks might spur cooperation, or it might not. Manchin also refuses to budge on the filibuster and thinks voting rights changes have to be done in common cause with a party that’s actively moving to suppress the vote across the country. There are some bipartisan gangs circling one another on China policy and criminal justice, but again success is not ensured.

Therefore, executive action and implementation is fast becoming the only remaining path by which change can happen, and the executive branch is, in many key areas… let’s say reluctant. I mentioned the Executive Action Tracker, and its 77 discrete agenda items. Biden’s accomplished 7, and gets partial credit for another 5. That’s not good enough, leaving on the table a host of policies on climate, health care, financial regulation, conservation, consumer protection, and much more. Implementation of grants for arts venues was delayed four months and only restarted yesterday; implementation of rental assistance for desperate tenants is just as bad. Immigration policy is thus far a trail of broken promises.

The first 100 days have been successful, but by definition they are incomplete. The legislative window is rapidly closing thanks to recalcitrant Senators in a narrow majority, and that which Biden has control over, his executive authority, has established a defined trend of doing too little and being pushed to do more.

Again, there’s a positive quality to this: the progressive movement really is at the table. It has a voice to move policy, though not always 100 percent. We might wish for Biden to get it right the first time, but the game of trial balloons and external pressure is common. Obama typically didn’t listen, or took much more time to come around. Biden has improved on this. But for this presidency to reach transformative levels, advocates are just going to have to keep working. The president will not do it by himself.

What Day of Biden’s Presidency Is It?

Day 98.

Today I Learned

The American Prospect is nonprofit, reader-funded journalism—and we need your help.

Our reporters dig deep, hold power to account, and explain how policy shapes people’s lives. If you value independent journalism that goes beyond the headlines, now’s the time to support it.

Here’s how you can help:
• Donate to power fearless reporting
• Subscribe to get our print magazine 6x/year. 

Every dollar funds our in-depth reporting. 

Donate Now. Subscribe here.