The New York Times - USA (2020-11-09)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2020 N P13

Election

WASHINGTON — President-
elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is poised
to unleash a series of executive ac-
tions on his first day in the Oval
Office, prompting what is likely to
be a yearslong effort to unwind
President Trump’s domestic
agenda and immediately signal a
wholesale shift in the United
States’ place in the world.
In the first hours after he takes
the oath of office on the West
Front of the Capitol at noon on Jan.
20, Mr. Biden has said, he will send
a letter to the United Nations indi-
cating that the country will rejoin
the global effort to combat climate
change, reversing Mr. Trump’s de-
cision to withdraw from the Paris
climate accord with more than 174
countries.
Mr. Biden’s afternoon will be a
busy one.
He has vowed that on Day 1 he
will move rapidly to confront the
coronavirus pandemic by ap-
pointing a “national supply chain
commander” and establishing a
“pandemic testing board,” similar
to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
wartime production panel. He has
said he will restore the rights of
government workers to unionize.
He has promised to order a new
fight against homelessness and
resettle more refugees fleeing
war. He has pledged to abandon
Mr. Trump’s travel ban on mostly
Muslim countries and to begin
calling foreign leaders in an at-
tempt to restore trust among the
United States’ closest allies.
“Every president wants to
come out of the gate strong and
start fulfilling campaign promises
before lunch on the first day,” said
Dan Pfeiffer, who served as a sen-
ior adviser to President Barack
Obama and helped choreograph
Mr. Obama’s first days in the
White House. “Executive orders
are the best way to do that.”
For Mr. Biden, who won the
election in a deeply divided na-
tion, the early signals he sends as
the country’s new leader will be
critical. On the trail, he repeatedly
said he was campaigning as a
Democrat but would govern “as
an American.” Following through
on that promise will require him to
demonstrate some respect for
parts of the Trump agenda that
were fiercely supported by the
more than 70 million people who
did not cast ballots for him.
“How far is he going to go?”
Rick Santorum, a former Republi-
can senator, asked on CNN on Sat-
urday, hours after Mr. Biden had

been declared the victor. “If you

want to show that you want to

work on a bipartisan basis, then

you don’t go out right away and

sign all the executive orders on

immigration and bypass the Con-

gress.”

But there is no question that Mr.

Biden and members of his party

are eager to systematically erase

what they view as destructive

policies that the president pur-

sued on the environment, immi-

gration, health care, gay rights,

trade, tax cuts, civil rights, abor-

tion, race relations, military

spending and more.

Some of that will require co-

operation with Congress, which

may remain divided next year. If

Republicans maintain control of

the Senate, Mr. Biden’s pledges to

roll back some of Mr. Trump’s tax

cuts are almost certain to run

headfirst into fierce opposition

from that chamber. Efforts to ad-

vance a more liberal agenda on

civil rights and race relations —

centerpieces of Mr. Biden’s stump

speech during his campaign —

may falter. And his efforts to

shape the new government with

appointments could be con-

strained by the need to win ap-

proval in a Republican Senate.

But Mr. Biden may be able to

achieve some of his goals with

nothing more than the stroke of a

pen. Mr. Trump largely failed to

successfully negotiate with House

Democrats during his four years

in office, leaving him no choice but

to use executive actions to ad-

vance his agenda. Mr. Biden can

use the same tools to reverse

them. Prior presidents have tried

to do just that, though not always

successfully.

On his first full day in the White

House in 2009, Mr. Obama issued

an executive order on presidential

records and a second one on ethics

that, among other provisions,

tried to ban members of his ad-

ministration from lobbying the

federal government for two years

after they leave. Ethics watch-

dogs later complained that some

officials had found ways around

the restrictions.

The next day, Mr. Obama or-

dered an end to torture by the gov-

ernment, responding to an outcry

over the use of harsh interroga-

tion measures by his predecessor.

He also ordered the closure of the

terrorist detention facility at

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — which

members of Congress were con-

tinuing to block by the time he left

office eight years later.

Mr. Trump, too, moved quickly.

In the first hours after he was

sworn in, Mr. Trump issued an ex-

ecutive order pledging to repeal

the Affordable Care Act and di-

recting the government to “take

all actions consistent with law to

minimize the unwarranted eco-

nomic and regulatory burdens of

the act.”

In the week that followed, Mr.

Trump issued executive orders on

immigration, requesting changes

to asylum proceedings at the bor-

der, increasing deportations of un-

documented immigrants and ban-

ning travel from several mostly

Muslim countries — an order that

incited chaos at several airports

as border officials struggled to un-

derstand whom it applied to.

Some executive orders have be-

come almost automatic at the

start of a new administration. Mr.

Biden is almost certain to move to

revoke the so-called global gag

rule, which prohibits federal gov-

ernment funding for foreign orga-

nizations that provide or even talk

about abortion. The rule, also

known as the Mexico City policy,

has been a political Ping-Pong ball

since Ronald Reagan was presi-

dent and is typically in place only

under Republican administra-

tions. Mr. Trump reinstated it on

his first business day in office.

But Mr. Biden has signaled that

his top priority will be demon-

strating a much more muscular

federal approach to the pandemic

than Mr. Trump’s leave-it-to-the

states strategy.

Aides said he would use the

power of his office to invoke the

Defense Production Act — the Ko-

rean War-era law that allows the

president to order businesses to

manufacture products necessary

for national defense — to build up

supplies more aggressively than

Mr. Trump has.

While Mr. Biden would like to

see a national mask mandate, his

advisers have concluded that he

does not have the legal authority

to impose one. So he will try to in-

crease mask wearing in other

ways. He has already said that he

would require masks on all federal

property, an executive order that

could have wide reach and is likely

to come in the first hours or days

of his presidency.

In addition to mandating masks

in federal buildings, Mr. Biden has

said he would require them on “all

interstate transportation.”

Mr. Biden has also derided Mr.

Trump’s lack of ethical standards,

accusing him of waging an assault

on Washington’s norms and tradi-

tions. Mr. Biden’s response to that

will probably take the form of an

ethics pledge to impose tough new

requirements on people serving in

his government. “The Trump ad-

ministration has shredded those

standards,” Mr. Biden’s campaign

wrote on his website. “On Day 1,

Biden will issue an ethics pledge,

building and improving on the

Obama-Biden administration’s

pledge, to ensure that every mem-

ber of his administration focuses

day in and day out on the best out-

comes for the American people,

and nothing else.”

In addition to rejoining the cli-

mate accord, Mr. Biden has also

made clear that he will begin us-

ing the levers of executive author-

ity to re-establish Mr. Obama’s re-

gime of environmental regula-

tions that Mr. Trump systemat-

ically dismantled.

That is likely to include a rapid

rescission of an executive order

Mr. Trump issued early in his ad-

ministration that itself called for

revoking all regulations address-

ing climate change and instead

promoting fossil fuel development

— and replacing it with one that

declares a Biden administration’s

intention to cut planet-warming

greenhouse gases.

“Revocation of executive or-

ders can be done immediately,”

said Michael Burger, the execu-

tive director of the Sabin Center

for Climate Change Law at Colum-

bia University who has studied

what climate regulation might

look like in a Biden administra-

tion. “That’s a big deal because

the executive orders give direc-

tion to administrative agencies

about how to exercise their discre-

tion and what the priorities are for

the administration.”

Mr. Biden may also move

quickly to restore national monu-

ments that Mr. Trump shrank

soon after taking office; stop the

Trump administration’s expedited

reviews of fossil fuel projects such

as oil pipelines; and reverse an

2017 order to “encourage energy

exploration and production” off-

shore, including the outer conti-

nental shelf.

Efforts to assist poor communi-

ties — often situated in proximity

to toxic sites and bearing the

brunt of climate change conse-

quences — could also be under-

taken from the White House. That

might include orders establishing

an environmental justice advisory

council that can coordinate policy

across agencies; creating screen-

ing tools to better understand en-

vironmental disparities across the

country; and increasing pollution

monitoring.

Passing bigger parts of Mr. Bi-

den’s environmental agenda, like

eliminating fossil fuel emissions

from the power sector by 2035,

would almost certainly require

Congress to pass a clean-energy-

specific law, most likely in the

form of a mandate that an increas-

ing percentage of electricity gen-

erated in the United States will be

produced by zero-emissions

sources, such as wind, solar, geo-

thermal, hydroelectric power and

possibly nuclear power.

Thomas J. Pyle, the president of

the Institute for Energy Research,

an organization that supports the

use of fossil fuels, said that “if his-

tory is a guide,” Republicans

would be unlikely to support any

type of mandate. Mr. Biden “will

be constrained to executive or-

ders and carefully crafted regula-

tions,” Mr. Pyle said.

ON DAY 1

Biden Will Roll Back

Parts of Trump Agenda

With Strokes of a Pen

JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES

Reversals are expected for President Trump’s orders on immigration, a travel ban on mostly Muslim countries and on the shrinking of

national monuments, like Bears Ears, above, in Utah. The new president may also require that masks be worn on all federal property.

ALEX GOODLETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES TAYLOR GLASCOCK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

What executive orders

give, executive orders

can take away.

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

and LISA FRIEDMAN

Sheryl Stolberg contributed re-
porting.

WASHINGTON — In late July
2011, with an economy-shaking
Treasury default only a few days
away and Congress flailing, Sena-
tor Mitch McConnell received a
Saturday phone call from Joseph
R. Biden Jr., then the vice presi-
dent.
“I think it’s time we talk,” Mr. Bi-
den told Mr. McConnell, Republi-
can of Kentucky, who was then the
minority leader.
That opening, recounted by Mr.
McConnell in his memoir, “The
Long Game,” initiated the second
in a series of one-on-one tax and
budget negotiations that
produced agreements that res-
cued the government from immi-
nent fiscal disaster while drawing
mixed reviews from fellow Demo-
crats.
President-elect Biden could be
making a lot more of those phone
calls in the years ahead.
Unless Democrats pick off two
Senate seats in Georgia to be de-
cided in runoff elections on Jan. 5,
Mr. Biden will have to navigate a
Senate narrowly controlled by Mr.
McConnell, who has happily
turned the chamber into a grave-
yard for Democratic legislation.
The likelihood of a Senate under
Republican rule severely con-
strains Mr. Biden’s legislative and
personnel agenda from the start,
dashing the hopes of those antici-
pating a post-Trump opening for
bold initiatives on health care,
taxes and the environment and an
administration populated by pro-
gressive icons.
Yet as much as anyone across
the aisle, Mr. Biden — as garru-
lous as Mr. McConnell is aloof —
has a close relationship with the
Senate leader and a track record
of working with him to strike bi-
partisan deals. The Kentuckian
has described Mr. Biden not only
as someone he liked, but also as a

man of his word who understands

how congressional negotiations

work and who knows how to give

as well as take.

“He doesn’t waste time telling

me why I am wrong,” Mr. McCon-

nell said in a bipartisan parting

tribute in 2016 as Mr. Biden pre-

sided over the Senate. “He gets

down to brass tacks, and he keeps

in sight the stakes. There’s a rea-

son ‘Get Joe on the phone’ is short-

hand for ‘time to get serious’ in my

office.”

Their ties have gone beyond

business — Mr. McConnell at-

tended the funeral of Mr. Biden’s

son Beau Biden in 2015; Mr. Biden

spoke at Mr. McConnell’s govern-

ment affairs center in Louisville.

“My memory is that they actu-

ally get along reasonably well,”

said Rohit Kumar, who as deputy

chief of staff to Mr. McConnell sat

in on the three Biden-McConnell

negotiations from 2010 to 2013.

“They have a lot of respect for one

another. It helps that they speak

the same language. They are sen-

ators.”

But much has changed in the

Senate in the four years since Mr.

Biden left public office, and even

more in the decade since he left

the chamber, where relations be-

tween the two parties are now bit-

ter and hostile and Mr. McConnell

has abandoned legislation in sin-

gle-minded pursuit of the confir-

mation of conservative judges.

When Mr. Biden suggested during

the campaign that he could work

with his old friend Mitch, many

Democratic senators scoffed and

said Mr. McConnell would eat Mr.

Biden’s lunch. And by Sunday af-

ternoon, 24 hours after Mr. Biden

had been declared the victor, Mr.

McConnell still had yet to issue a

statement congratulating the

president-elect.

Mr. Biden’s allies say he is far

from naïve about the state of the

Senate and Mr. McConnell’s track

record. He was, after all, part of

the Obama team whose initiatives

were opposed in almost blanket

fashion by a man who declared his

chief objective was to make

Barack Obama a one-term presi-

dent. Mr. McConnell’s deep-

seated resistance peaked with the

refusal to even consider Mr. Oba-

ma’s nomination of Judge Merrick

B. Garland to the Supreme Court

in 2016. But colleagues say that

Mr. Biden is not the sort to surren-

der before the battle begins.

“Joe Biden is well aware that

Mitch McConnell was an obstruc-

tionist who blocked most of the

priorities of the Biden-Obama ad-

ministration and who used his po-

sition to block a whole range of ju-

dicial nominees,” said Senator

Chris Coons, Democrat of Dela-

ware, who occupies the seat previ-

ously held by Mr. Biden and is

close to the incoming president.

“But he also knows there are cer-

tain moments when you have to

try.”

Democrats are not giving up on

taking the majority and see the

two Georgia seats as winnable in a

culturally and demographically

transforming state. But they say if

they are stuck with Mr. McConnell

as majority leader, the question of

how he and Mr. Biden mesh is in

many respects up to Mr. McCon-

nell and what he determines is po-

litically advantageous for him and

his troops.

“Is this going to be the Mitch

McConnell of one-term Obama

threats or is it going to be a differ-

ent Mitch McConnell?” asked

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illi-

nois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat.

“I really don’t know.”

For now, Mr. McConnell is not

talking, declining interviews dur-

ing a delicate period when Presi-

dent Trump has resisted the elec-

tion results and control of the Sen-

ate remains unclear. Members of

both parties and Mr. McConnell’s

allies say he will be influenced by

the contours of the 2022 election

map and whether he wants to ce-

ment a legacy beyond the deter-

mined judicial push that placed

more than 200 judges on the fed-

eral courts, including three Su-

preme Court justices. Mr. McCon-

nell has recently declined to di-

rectly negotiate with Democrats

at all, delegating pandemic talks

to the Trump administration.

Another factor, senators say,

will be how much control Mr.

Trump tries to exert over Republi-

can politics, whether he resorts to

trolling Republicans to deter them

from trying to reach agreements

with the new administration. But

with Mr. Trump gone from the

White House, Mr. McConnell in-

stantly becomes the most influen-

tial Republican in the capital, and

he will want to use that influence.

With a razor-thin majority at

best in a chamber that functions

on consensus, Mr. McConnell is

not all-powerful, and the slippage

of just a few Republicans could

complicate his life. If thwarted by

Mr. McConnell, Mr. Biden is likely

to try to put pressure on him by

reaching out to more potentially

amenable Republicans, beginning

with Senators Susan Collins of

Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,

Mitt Romney of Utah and others in

the party who have been frus-

trated by the lack of legislative ac-

tivity in the chamber.

“Joe has a lot of good relation-

ships,” said Ms. Collins, newly em-

powered by a victory many on

both sides of the aisle saw as un-

likely. “I think there is a real

hunger for the Senate to begin de-

bating legislation and start get-

ting things done, and vote, and

have philosophical decisions

made on the floor.”

With the Senate focused on

judges for much of the past four

years, a backlog of bipartisan bills

already exists on health care,

among other issues. Though the

scope of legislation would be

much reduced under Republican

control, senators said they could

envision deals on public works

projects, prescription drug costs

and some elements of immigra-

tion law, including extending pro-

tections for the so-called Dream-

ers as well as the handling of visas

for highly skilled workers.

All anticipate that the continu-

ing response to the pandemic —

both from a health and economic

perspective — will dominate the

legislative agenda for the foresee-

able future.

The test of how a Republican

Senate and a Biden administra-

tion interact will come quickly

with Mr. Biden’s need to fill a cab-

inet. Holding the majority, Mr. Mc-

Connell will essentially wield veto

power over the choices since he

can decide which to bring to the

floor. In decades past, senators

granted a new president wide dis-

cretion in his picks, but the confir-

mation process in the Senate has

become a partisan battleground,

and some Democrats refused to

vote for any of Mr. Trump’s

choices. Some Republicans might

want to return the favor, though

they also realize national security

positions and other top posts must

be occupied.

While Democrats are hoping

Mr. Biden brings his deal-making

prowess to the job, that was not al-

ways the case when it came to his

talks with Mr. McConnell.

Though they ultimately sup-

ported it, Democrats were furious

over Mr. Biden’s uninvited inter-

vention in a showdown in late 2012

over the “fiscal cliff” looming from

the impending expiration of Presi-

dent George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

Many believed Mr. McConnell

outfoxed him when Mr. Biden

agreed to extend the tax cuts ex-

cept for income above $450,000 —

an outcome Mr. Biden portrayed

as persuading Mr. McConnell to

raise taxes by $600 billion, but

which progressives believed was

far too generous to wealthy tax-

payers. Democrats complained

that they received little in return,

and that the agreement ham-

strung them for years in trying to

generate new sources of revenue.

“That was a great deal for Mitch

McConnell and a terrible deal for

America,” Senator Michael Ben-

net, Democrat of Colorado, shot

back at Mr. Biden during a presi-

dential primary debate last June

when Mr. Biden gloated about the

agreement.

Yet Mr. Kumar, the former Mc-

Connell aide, said he believed the

Republican advantage on that

bargain had been exaggerated

over the years — a view that Dem-

ocrats must hope is true if they are

now counting on Mr. Biden to find

common ground with Mr. McCon-

nell.

“The truth of the matter is we

thought we got a good deal,” said

Mr. Kumar, now a senior official at

the national office of PwC in

Washington. “But we didn’t think

we had run the table.”

BIPARTISAN TIES

Old Hands, Used to Driving Bargains, on Opposite Sides of a Political Divide

By CARL HULSE

Senator Mitch McConnell

speaking on Wednesday.

ERIK BRANCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES