With an economy in recession due to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has decided to home in on the economy, still the one policy area where a slim majority of voters prefer President Donald Trump’s approach.
Biden’s plans draw some from his Democratic primary opponents’ ideas, including a version of Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to use the federal procurement process to buy American-made products, two people briefed on Biden’s proposals said. But while Warren’s proposal focused on clean energy, Biden’s is wider and aimed at broadly stimulating the economy.
The kind of items that might be purchased using the proposed $400 billion over four years would include clean vehicles and clean energy; materials to plan for a future public health crisis such as ventilators and masks; materials for infrastructure projects such as steel, concrete and equipment; and telecommunications.
A promise to rebuild the American middle class has been at the core of Biden’s campaign, and was criticized for being too incremental while candidates like Warren and Bernie Sanders pitched “big structural change.” But as the coronavirus pandemic has dragged down the economy, Biden has suggested there’s a need for bigger change and that voters will have the appetite for it.
“The blinders have been taken off,” Biden said an April fundraiser. “Because of this COVID crisis, I think people are realizing: ‘My Lord, look at what is possible.’”
No New Deal-Style Plans
But most of the more progressive ideas, like the Green New Deal and other large jobs programs that also harken back to the Franklin Roosevelt policies of the Great Depression, will likely be left behind at the beginning in favor of a more step-by-step approach, the Biden campaign says.
With the moderate steps, Biden is betting that he’ll attract Republicans weary of the Trump administration along with independents, while retaining progressive support even without adopting some key plans.
Steph Sterling, vice president for advocacy and policy at the Roosevelt Institute, and others on the left say they would like to see Biden contemplate a jobs guarantee or other measures that would be more in the vein of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
But a Biden advisor said such policies are not being seriously considered, though the candidate has proposed creating a U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps that would employ 100,000 people.
Biden did offer some parameters in April, adding, “Look at the institutional changes we can make without us becoming a socialist country or any of that malarkey that we can make to provide the opportunities to change the institutional drawbacks.” The U.S., he said, is “one of the few countries in the world, whatever crisis they’re faced with we’ve overcome it and we always come out stronger, better. We have a chance to really move the ball forward in the next three or four years.”
“There is going to be a broad-based view not just among Democrats but among independents and even some Republicans that this plan and its substance is matched to the moment,” Sullivan, the Biden policy aide, said. “It is focused on trying to drive job creation fast so that we don’t have scarring, so that we don’t have people unemployed long term, so that we don’t have businesses dying.”