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11 min read . Updated: 21 Jan 2022, 06:37 AM IST The president got trillions in spending through Congress, but he was unable to accomplish some of his top social and climate priorities
WASHINGTON : President Biden took office a year ago, promising to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, revive the economy and strive for unity in a nation roiled by division and crisis.
Speaking to a nation battered by the pandemic and fresh off the recent deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Biden declared, “It is a time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And, this is certain. We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era."
A year later, Mr. Biden’s record on his promises has been mixed, with strong early progress passing Covid-19 relief spending and ramping up vaccinations. But by late summer he was challenged by a new coronavirus variant, rising inflation and widespread criticism over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Mr. Biden navigated his narrow, fractious majority in Congress to get a $1 trillion infrastructure package passed but failed to unite his party around his roughly $2 trillion social spending and climate change bill. His pandemic strategy to boost vaccination rates slowed over the course of the year and took a hit when the Supreme Court tossed out his broadest-reaching mandate for American workers, and his administration has pivoted to emphasizing testing and masks amid the Omicron surge. And the nation remains deeply polarized, with Mr. Biden taking a critical posture toward Republicans of late.
“I didn’t overpromise, but I think if you take a look at what we’ve been able to do, you have to acknowledge we made enormous progress," Mr. Biden said at a press conference Wednesday. “One thing I haven’t been able to do so far is get my Republican friends to get in the game of making things better in this country."
Heading deeper into a midterm election year, Mr. Biden’s ability to regain momentum may soon dwindle, with Republicans opposed to many of his efforts and Democrats, themselves split on some of the president’s priorities, increasingly focused on the campaign trail. With a narrow majority in the House of Representatives and a 50-50 split in the Senate, Democrats already have little room to maneuver.
Polls have shown Americans’ view the nation as headed on the wrong track, and the president’s approval ratings have foundered in recent months, standing at 42% Wednesday, according to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregation of public polls, down from 53% when he took office.
“They elected him for four years, not one year. And I think that we’ve gotten more done in a single year in terms of the volume of legislation passed, the size and the scope of it, than any president in history," White House chief of staff Ron Klain said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) argued recently that Mr. Biden hadn’t lived up to his promises to ease political tensions. After Mr. Biden made a fiery speech saying changes to Senate rules were needed to pass voting rights and comparing some Republican voting policies to Jim Crow segregation laws, Mr. McConnell said the president was elected to bridge divides and dial down the political temperature in the country.
“President Biden has chosen to fail his own test," he said.
Here’s a look at Mr. Biden’s first year in office and the challenges ahead for the White House.
Covid-19
“I will take care of this, I will end this," Mr. Biden said of the virus at the final presidential debate in 2020.
A year later, the nation hasn’t vanquished the pandemic, though vaccinations have allowed American life to get closer to normal than at the time of his inauguration.
Roughly 73% of American adults are fully vaccinated, new treatments are being approved and a $1.9 trillion relief bill passed early in Mr. Biden’s term provided money to help reopen schools.
But Mr. Biden’s July 4 declaration that the nation was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus" proved to be premature. The Delta variant took hold over the summer, and 2022 began with the highly transmissible Omicron variant triggering surging cases, a rise in hospitalizations, flight cancellations, testing shortages and school closures. More than 853,000 people have died in the U.S. due to the virus since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“They did some things very, very well and some things clearly not," said Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.
Mr. Biden has turned to tougher measures to boost vaccination rates. But the Supreme Court blocked a vaccination-or-testing mandate for larger employers, though the court allowed the administration to impose a vaccine mandate for more than 10 million healthcare workers whose facilities participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
Mr. Biden is trying to shift his message from beating the virus to getting Americans to accept it as part of daily life. His aides say that the focus is on reducing hospitalizations and deaths, and that the risks to those who are vaccinated are significantly lower. The administration is now focusing on increasing access to testing, following a holiday season that saw serious testing delays and complaints that it should have invested more in testing earlier.
The Economy
“We can build back better, with an economy that rewards work not wealth," Mr. Biden said in a campaign speech in Milwaukee on Oct. 30, 2020.
Mr. Biden’s first year in office has seen major economic gains, even as American consumers feel the squeeze of higher prices.
The economy produced 6.4 million jobs last year, the most in a single year since the start of record-keeping in 1939. The unemployment rate saw a sharp decline, to 3.9% last month from 6.4% in January 2021. The $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief law Mr. Biden signed in March contributed to many Americans’ finances improving.
Mr. Biden also signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law to address aging roads and bridges and improve internet access, all of which he has argued will boost the economy and improve competition with China.
But inflation hit 7% in December, the highest level since 1982. Mr. Biden’s critics have said pumping so much additional money into the economy through the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief law exacerbated inflation. Republicans say rising inflation shows Mr. Biden’s economic prescriptions have misfired.
“The president bungled the economy in his first year; 2021 should have been a banner year," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Biden has taken executive action to try to unclog supply chains that have been backed up by soaring consumer demand and pandemic-related disruptions. The Biden administration last year took measures aimed at reducing the backlog, including efforts to prod Southern California shipping terminals to move toward 24-hour operations that had limited success. The president also has noted that inflation is rising around the world.
The Federal Reserve acknowledged its initial reading that inflation would be transitory proved overly optimistic. The central bank is on track to begin a cycle of regular interest-rate increases at its meeting in March. The challenge for the Fed will be to raise rates without being so aggressive it risks causing a recession and stoking unemployment. Mr. Biden must also deal with political fallout from voters who blame him and Democrats for higher prices—as well as Republicans seeking to pin the blame on him—ahead of the November midterm elections. A Wall Street Journal poll last month showed voters were pessimistic about the economy.
Foreign Policy
“We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again," Mr. Biden said in his 2021 inaugural address.
A year later, the president has worked to invigorate ties with traditional allies, attending global conferences in England and Italy and focusing on issues like the pandemic and climate change. But he surprised some allies with the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, got into a squabble with France over a new security agreement with Australia, and now faces escalating tensions with Russia and China.
In his first year, the president often defined the nation’s geopolitics as a struggle between democracies and autocracies. In June, he was received with fanfare by his Group of Seven counterparts for a gathering at a chilly English seaside resort.
Weeks later, Mr. Biden followed through with his long-promised withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The disorderly operation rattled some allies and led to widespread criticism that his administration mishandled the situation. More than 60,000 Afghan interpreters and others who have applied for visas to seek shelter in the U.S. after working alongside American forces remain in Afghanistan, a State Department official said last month.
Mr. Biden has defended the exit, saying he wouldn’t extend a “forever war."
The new security agreement with Australia—while aimed at beefing up security in the Pacific—led to France temporarily recalling its ambassador in protest. Mr. Biden eventually patched up the relationship with the nation’s oldest ally.
The U.S. is dealing with a more aggressive Russia, which is massing troops at the Ukraine border. The Biden administration has threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with extensive sanctions if Moscow invades Ukraine, but it has expressed hope that diplomatic efforts can prevent any further escalation. So far, they have not.
After an initial tense meeting in Alaska between their foreign ministers, the U.S. has sought to find areas to work with China, most notably on climate change, but a lengthy list of differences remain on human rights, trade and technology. Washington is also seeking to strengthen the U.S. semiconductor industry in hopes of countering China economically.
Climate Change
“We can, and we will, deal with climate change. It isn’t only a crisis, it’s an enormous opportunity," Mr. Biden told the Democratic National Convention in August 2020.
Mr. Biden has moved to rejoin the Paris climate accord and begun pursuing regulatory measures against oil-and-gas producers and other sources of greenhouse gas emissions. But some of his most significant climate measures remain in limbo as part of his roughly $2 trillion climate and social spending proposal in Congress, putting at risk his ability to reach a goal of cutting U.S. emissions 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030.
The U.S. helped forge an agreement among more than 190 nations to reduce emissions during the United Nations’ climate talks in Glasgow last fall. But the agreement failed to include any enforcement mechanisms and essentially relied on individual nations to act on their own to reduce emissions.
The 2021 infrastructure law contained climate-related measures, including moves to bolster transport and storage of carbon dioxide. But the stalled social-spending proposal contains things like tax credits for renewable energy, energy efficiency and electric vehicles, and ways to bolster supply chains for renewable-energy technology and efforts to heighten resilience to climate change.
Financial regulators, led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have taken a more active stance on climate issues during Mr. Biden’s tenure. Regulators last October formally designated climate change an emerging and growing risk to U.S. financial stability, and several agencies are implementing measures that would push banks and companies to model, manage and publicly disclose financial risks related to climate change.
Many Republicans and industry advocates say financial regulators shouldn’t have their hands deep in environmental policy. Progressive Democrats want bold action quickly.
Party priorities
“Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world for our children? I believe we must and I believe we will," Mr. Biden said in his inaugural address.
Mr. Biden’s inability to win unified Democratic support—amid tensions between his party’s moderates and progressives—for his social-spending and climate plan has stalled some key campaign promises, like funding public preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds. On many other party priorities, like gun laws and abortion, he has taken executive action but has been unable to pass legislation that would make more sweeping and permanent changes.
Some of Mr. Biden’s campaign pledges, including extending paid family leave to more Americans and funding two years of free community college, were cut from the social-spending package in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to win support from Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and haven’t been revived.
Mr. Biden also has made federal election laws a top priority, as Democrats say changes are needed to protect voter access to the polls. Republicans say the efforts are a politically motivated federal overreach into matters best left to states. Last week, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) and Mr. Manchin said they wouldn’t support changing the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to get around Republican opposition, likely dealing a death blow to the elections legislation.
On immigration, Mr. Biden took office pledging to undo much of his predecessor’s policies. But he has maintained and even brought back many of the border policies he campaigned against. At the same time, Mr. Biden has presided over a legal immigration system that is still operating at reduced capacity and accumulating an unprecedented backlog of immigration applications and pending court cases.
His budget plan budget proposal removes language banning the use of federal dollars for abortions in most cases, as he promised to do on the campaign trail. But a law codifying the right to an abortion hasn’t advanced, as abortion access is facing new restrictions around the country and the Supreme Court weighs a case that could chip away at federal abortion protections.
Mr. Biden has extended a pause on student-loan payments and has undertaken a piecemeal effort to wipe out student loans, but a promise to forgive at least $10,000 in student debt per person remains unfulfilled.
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