Today, 78-year-old Joe Biden will become the oldest person to be inaugurated as president of the United States. On the campaign trail, the constant reminders of his advanced age created some awkward moments; at a campaign stop in Iowa in December 2019, Biden responded to one voter’s suggestion that he was too old to be president by challenging the man to a push-up contest (thankfully, no such contest occurred).
It is ironic then that Biden’s victory was powered by youth voters. Voters ages 18 to 29 preferred Biden over Trump by a margin of 61% to 36%. This demographic was especially pivotal in tilting swing states towards the Democrat: In Georgia, for example, where Biden prevailed by just 7,000 votes, young voters cast 188,000 more ballots for Biden than they did for Trump. In that state and in other key states like Arizona, young people of color supported Biden in droves. With youth turnout increasing significantly between 2016 and 2020, the potential of Gen Z and young millenials to become political kingmakers is evident — especially for the Democratic Party. Therefore, gauging the Biden administration’s ability to act on the issues that matter most to young voters is critical as his administration begins.
The Fall 2020 Harvard Youth Poll, conducted by the Harvard Public Opinion Project and Ipsos Public Affairs, found that there is a broad desire among young Americans (ages 18-29) for more government action on three core issues: healthcare and the coronavirus, race relations and systemic racism and the environment. Specifically, 72% of young Americans urged more action to address healthcare issues, while 71% advocated for more action improving race relations and for dealing with the environment. Majorities of young Americans supported more government action on the economic and health consequences of the coronavirus, and notably, an impressive 75% of respondents supported government action to improve mental health care services.
Biden ran on an ambitious, progressive policy platform that has many youth voters excited — almost as much as they are excited by the end of the Trump administration. In the early days of his administration, they will likely be pleased by Biden’s forthcoming executive action on the environment and racial justice. However, with slim Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, they could be left disappointed if Biden’s broader policy agenda — from his coronavirus relief stimulus bill to his plan to strengthen the Affordable Care Act — is watered down or shelved in order to gain bipartisan support.
Biden’s Agenda
While Biden opposed the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All during the campaign, two transformative policy proposals that would upend the status quo on climate and health policy, his policy plans regarding those two issues are still the most progressive among any presidential nominee in American history.
On climate policy, Biden has treated the Green New Deal as a framework for emissions-cutting policies, while also linking his climate goals to labor and environmental justice. Biden’s plan is anchored around the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. To do this, his plan calls for federal investments of $2 trillion over the next four years, including massive increases in renewable energy, electric vehicle use and job-generating infrastructure projects. While Biden’s plan includes provisions on nuclear power and carbon capture that young climate activists may bemoan, it has also won the plaudits of climate-savvy Democrats such as Gov. Jay Inslee. Moreover, those provisions are meant to be supplemented by environmental action outside of legislation, such as limiting oil and gas development on federal land and rejoining the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
On racial justice, an issue on which Biden’s record has come under fire from young voters, he has also taken cues from the left flank of his party. Biden’s plan for criminal justice reform focuses on reducing the prison population, rooting out racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system and emphasizing rehabilitation for the formerly incarcerated. To confront the racial wealth gap and COVID-19’s unequal economic impact, Biden proposes more support for Black-owned businesses, a revamp of President Trump’s “Opportunity Zones,” and changes in federal housing policy. Last year, after George Floyd’s death and the wave of protests, Biden sharpened his rhetoric on systemic racism and advocated for a federal ban on chokeholds, a national police oversight commission and more data collection on law enforcement.
Finally, Biden’s healthcare vision has taken on added importance as millions of Americans have been laid off this year, potentially losing their health insurance. Instead of joining some of his Democratic campaign opponents in backing a single-payer system, which is preferred by young voters, Biden led the pack of moderate candidates who supported the addition of a public option to the ACA. Since then, he has elaborated on his goal to protect and build on the law, with plans to increase tax credits to buy insurance and boost Medicaid. Thankfully for his young supporters, his plan mentions mental health parity and expanded access, although it is short on details for implementation.
In a non-pandemic inauguration year, Biden would have likely made one of these three policy areas the core goal of his first year in office. However, the U.S.’ continued bout with the virus has shifted Biden’s first priorities in office. Last week, Biden debuted his proposal for a $1.9 trillion spending package dubbed the American Rescue Plan, which focuses on combating the pandemic and providing relief to struggling Americans. Debate over this legislation is already brewing, demonstrating the chief obstacle Biden will encounter on the way to turning his, and his young supporters, policy aspirations into reality: Republican opposition.
Promises Meet Politics
As president, Biden will have two avenues to impact policy: shepherding legislation through Congress and issuing executive orders. The extent to which he exercises the former will depend on how well he uses his talent for bipartisanship to woo Republicans on major issues. Additionally, President Biden’s cabinet agencies should be able to dismantle most of President Trump’s regulatory rollbacks — although his administration will still be beholden to courts filled with newly-appointed conservative judges in the likely event of legal challenges.
What is certain is that in the waking hours of his presidency, Biden plans to act on a number of issues important to youth voters. Today, he is set to issue a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel, rejoin the Paris Agreement and extend a federal moratorium on evictions and student loan payments. The last of these will be crucial for young Americans who are part of the country’s 42 million student loan borrowers and the 63% of HPOP respondents who said that they were concerned about housing. By the end of Inauguration Day, he is expected to have also released executive orders and legislative proposals related to immigration, an issue that 69% of respondents to the Youth Poll believed President Trump mishandled.
Once Biden’s cabinet picks are confirmed, agencies will start to make substantive policy changes. Biden’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Michael Regan, plans to reinstate Obama-era rules on methane emissions and appliance efficiency. Attorney General Merrick Garland won’t excite young Democrats, but Vanita Gupta, Biden’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, could be the more influential figure for racial justice. She has pledged to “harness all of the Justice Department’s levers for civil rights, justice and police reform,” presumably including consent decrees. These, which have been largely retired under the Trump administration, force local jurisdictions to collaborate with the Justice Department on certain reforms. And despite his lack of public health experience, Xavier Becerra has a long record of defending the ACA and intends to leverage Health and Human Services to repair it.
These changes alone won’t win the praise of young voters who seek large-scale change. For them, Biden’s push to pass the American Rescue Plan should be closely watched. Democrats’ ten-seat majority in the House of Representatives makes passage likely in that chamber, but in order to pass the Senate through “regular order,” the bill will need to gain ten Republican votes to reach cloture. Its high price tag makes that a tough ask, given Republicans’ penchant for rediscovering fiscal conservatism while in opposition. The bill is also bold in scope; to accompany $400 billion for vaccines and testing and $1 trillion in direct relief for families, the bill would also raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and give $440 billion to ailing state and local governments. GOP senators have already described the bill as “a colossal waste” and as a “bail out [for] a bunch of poorly run blue states.”
Biden’s first impulse in the face of firm opposition will likely be to lean on a group of centrist Republicans, including Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, to come to the negotiating table and cajole their GOP colleagues. However, if these negotiations strip the bill of some of its liberal bucket-list goals, such as the minimum wage provision, Democrats in the Senate could choose another route: budget reconciliation. This process would allow a bill to pass with only a simple majority. Currently, though, it’s not a certainty that the plan would garner even 50 votes; Sen. Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democratic senator, has poured water on the idea of another round of near-universal stimulus checks, which Biden has championed. Achieving legislation that both Manchin and Sen. Bernie Sanders can feel comfortable voting for will be a persistent challenge throughout the Biden administration.
The larger problem with budget reconciliation is that it can only be used once a year on a spending bill, meaning that if Senate Democrats use it to pass the American Rescue Plan, they will be forced to amass a three-fifths majority to pass any other significant spending bills in 2021 unless they remove the filibuster as well. That could be the death knell for healthcare or environmental legislation this year. On the former, the fate of the ACA could still be in limbo until June, as the Supreme Court weighs a lawsuit seeking to overturn it. While it is expected to survive, rallying ten Republicans behind a strengthening of the law could be difficult. Inspiring GOP enthusiasm for environmental legislation might be more feasible, given that the party has belatedly become more active on the issue. Reducing the bill’s price tag will be critical, and emphasizing green infrastructure could sway some Republicans looking to boost job growth in their states.
For their opening move, Senate Democrats could also decide to channel last year’s energy around police reform and try passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House last June and would enact many of the reforms Biden supports. But the act stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate last year in part because of disagreements over qualified immunity, a legal provision that makes it enormously difficult to sue police officers. After Republicans ran a law-and-order campaign, it seems unlikely that they would consent to curb this provision. Police reform would then risk following the route of gun control, as a bipartisan push for reform fizzles out over minute but intense policy differences.
For Biden to achieve change and bypass such differences, he will need to contain his ambition. He will inevitably be reminded that the 2022 midterms could be ugly, and that if he does only have two years of unified Democratic control, he will likely only be able to act on one or two major policy priorities. Obama accomplished his signature achievement, the ACA, in 2009 before watching his party lose its House majority in 2010 and spending the rest of his two terms largely paralyzed. Biden’s “Obamacare moment” could come with passing the American Rescue Plan and convincing Congress to pass substantial environmental legislation for the first time since 2009. Such a targeted approach wouldn’t necessarily preclude Biden from claiming smaller victories in important areas, such as sentencing reform or prescription drugs prices. Still, given the unique state of affairs in the Senate as Biden enters office, patience will be key.
Young voters have valid reasons to favor urgent, immediate action. The Youth Poll found that 53% of respondents had experienced anxiety in the day before taking the survey, making it the most commonly reported emotion and representing a five-point increase from the Spring 2019 survey. This number points to a demographic and voting bloc increasingly on edge. How effectively Biden delivers for these young Americans, who rallied behind him despite their misgivings, will be a defining metric of his unprecedented presidency.
Image by René DeAnda is licensed under the Unsplashed License.
