Doug Schoen: Biden will face grave challenges as president — here are a few and what to expect

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President-elect Biden stumps for Democrats in Georgia Senate runoffs

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When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated Jan. 20 as president and vice president, following the Electoral College vote Monday that cemented their election victory, they will have their work cut out for them, given the grave challenges facing our nation and the bitterly partisan tenor of our politics.

If Democrats fail to win two Georgia U.S. Senate run-off elections Jan. 5, Biden will be the first president since George W. Bush to enter office without the Senate under his party’s control. That would afford Republicans considerable influence over the success of his administration’s first-term agenda.

If Democrats are able to win both Georgia Senate elections — shifting the balance in the Senate to 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans — Vice President Harris will be able to cast tie-breaking votes in support of the administration. But Biden will still enter the White House with a mandate to work with both parties.

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Voters want the Biden-Harris administration to achieve significant reform on the economy, health care, the environment, and immigration after years of partisan stalemate.

Positively, Biden’s record signals that this is precisely what he will endeavor to do. During his years in the Senate and as vice president, Biden was known as a consensus-builder who worked to find common ground between both parties in order to achieve results.

In the early years of President Barack Obama’s first term, Biden oversaw the passage and implementation of a $787-billion economic stimulus plan, which helped pull the country out of the Great Recession.

Then-Vice President Biden successfully persuaded three Republican senators to support the stimulus legislation and break the GOP filibuster, putting the economy on track to recovery and giving President Obama an early major legislative victory.

And in 2010 Biden’s deal-making prowess helped secure the passage of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, which passed with some Republican support.

During his earlier tenure in the Senate, Biden’s compromise approach led to the passage of several important bipartisan bills, including the Violence Against Women Act and an assault weapons ban.

However, the Biden-Harris administration will inherit a national crisis even more severe — and a climate of partisanship even more hostile than the Obama-Biden administration inherited. The incoming administration will face resistance from Republicans and progressive Democrats alike.

Biden’s calls for bipartisanship have already elevated tensions with progressive leaders.

Voters want the Biden-Harris administration to achieve significant reform on the economy, health care, the environment, and immigration after years of partisan stalemate.

Recently Biden joined moderate Democrats in backing a $908 billion bipartisan coronavirus economic relief measure, which represents a compromise between what Democratic and Republican lawmakers initially wanted. Yet, members of the progressive left — like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. —were some of the first to say that they would not agree to support the bill because it did not go far enough.

And on Thursday, Sanders was one of the few senators who held up the vote on the continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown and keep federal agencies open for another week while negotiations continued on the economic stimulus.

This is indicative of the pushback that Biden’s agenda will face from an emboldened far-left, which could make his goal of consensus-building difficult to realize. However, if Biden decides to placate the progressive wing by pursuing policies that are unpopular with the broader electorate, his presidency could well be doomed to failure.

Given the likelihood of a divided government and predictable resistance from within his own party, we can anticipate that Biden will lean on executive orders early on in his presidency to further some of his top domestic priorities — in particular, on climate change, public health and immigration.

Early on, Biden is set to reverse President Trump’s rollback of over 100 public health and environmental protection regulations that the Obama administration put in place, and will also likely reestablish protections under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) for Dreamers who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

However, the central components of Biden’s domestic agenda — investing in clean energy to create jobs and achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions; providing a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants; and expanding on the Affordable Care Act by creating a public option — will all hinge on Biden’s ability to work with Republicans and progressive Democrats in Congress.

Biden’s first domestic priority will be controlling the surging COVID-19 pandemic and getting the economy back on track. The president-elect has laid out a sweeping agenda for federal agencies to address COVID-19 during his first 100 days, including a federal mask mandate and a robust strategy to vaccinate 100 million Americans.

Though Biden will be able to take some unilateral action in the form of executive orders, his administration will need to work with Congress to pass an additional economic stimulus. Democrats are seeking more economic stimulus spending than Republicans want.

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In terms of foreign policy and international diplomacy, which Biden will be able to affect more unilaterally than most domestic policy, we can expect that he will take an entirely different approach from Trump, whose America First strategy has often isolated the U.S. from our allies and emboldened our adversaries.

Biden’s first-term foreign policy objectives include rededicating the U.S. to our global alliances like NATO, reestablishing America’s moral and democratic authority in the international community, and working with our international allies to confront the challenges of Russian and Chinese aggression.

To that end, Biden has also indicated that he will take immediate action and rejoin the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump withdrew the U.S. from both.

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Ultimately, the challenges we face at home and abroad are enormous. And it is clear that the road ahead for the incoming administration — and for the country — will be incredibly difficult.

However, Biden’s record as an experienced, pragmatic consensus-builder gives us reasonable hope that his can be a constructive administration of lasting significance that delivers results for the American people and reestablishes the United States’ position as a global leader.

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