114 Things For A Biden–Harris Administration To Do Right Away & Later

November 8th, 2020 by Vijay Govindan 

Here’s the situation: President Trump has no plans to concede. Most likely, he’ll exhaust every legal means possible, including recounts, lawsuits, and potential Supreme Court petitions before leaving the White House. No evidence of fraud has been shown. Many Republican and Democratic governors, secretaries of state, senators, representatives, and US attorneys have defended the validity of the current election. From my eyes, the current election is one of the most transparent we have had as a nation.

When the president does move out of the White House, I imagine he’ll do it one day before the inauguration. President Biden and Vice President Harris will be facing a divided Congress, with no Cabinet, and most likely a Republican majority in the Senate. Expect Republicans to do everything possible to slow down a Biden–Harris presidency. Also key — they need to fight hard to win the two special election Georgia seats for the Senate.

What steps can they take to heal a divided nation and move us in a positive direction? Political capital will be at a premium, as we noted here. Messaging, framing, substance, and actions will be important. The focus should be on a big vision, getting things done, and letting people know.

Here are 114 things a Biden-Harris administration can do right away or later, perhaps not in the order given. (The American Prospect has a list of 277 items a Biden–Harris administration could undertake without Congress if you want a longer list.)

1. Bring science back!
2. Reverse the science and civil service talent drain in key federal agencies.
3. Have an A-list for every Cabinet position.
4. If the Senate doesn’t help you with the Cabinet, appoint them using the Vacancies Act.
5. Aim to have a diverse Cabinet, with many women and minorities.
6. Don’t pick “yes people” or extremist people to fill positions in the White House.
7. Improve the ground game for Democrats in the 2022 elections.
8. Don’t be afraid to challenge Republicans.
9. Take every small win and make it seem big.
10. Visit the state and county that had the highest vote % for President Trump.
11. Visit the state and county that had the highest vote % for President Biden.
12. Visit the state and county that was closest to an equal vote for both candidates.
13. Have press conferences that are open and honest.
14. Be positive and full of hope.
15. Govern as a centrist and moderate.
16. Stay away from distractions.
17. Stay away from controversial subjects.
18. Focus on unity-building subjects.
19. Unite the separated children and family from the southern border.
20. Visit and help disaster areas recover with a focus on renewable energy.
21. Visit normal and healthy areas.
22. Have regular interviews with Fox News.
23. Have regular interviews with CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and everyone else.
24. Have interviews with major radio and streaming networks.
25. Have interviews with major social media networks.
26. Have interviews with major state papers.
27. Have a Roosevelt-style fireside chat every day from the White House for the first 90 days.
28. Have town halls every week in a different state for a year.
29. Work with the National Institute of Health and Center for Disease Control for a plan on how to safely re-open economies.
30. Have a plan to increase PPE using existing laws.
31. Provide every person free masks if they want them.
32. Be prepared with a science-based plan to tackle the coronavirus by working with individual states.
33. Cover the costs of all COVID testing.
34. Be ready to distribute the vaccine for free.
35. Work with Congress on passing a relief aid package for the nation.
36. Work with Congress to help states and cities in bad shape.
37. Start undoing executive orders from President Trump’s administration.
38. Work to re-join the Paris Agreement.
39. Work to pass and sign the Secure Act 2.0 bill. This bill follows the popular Secure Act bill earlier in the year, and will modernize the retirement system.
40. Work with Congress to phase out oil and natural gas subsidies.
41. Stop fracking on public lands.
42. Cap methane emissions from oil fields.
43. Couple that with reducing tariffs on steel, agriculture, other nonsense tariffs, and reducing the tension from trade wars.
44. Create a carbon dividend, as a “carbon fee” sounds like a tax. Everyone likes dividends.
45. Show how a carbon dividend helps the poor, middle class, and rich in every state.
46. Give guidance to Big Oil and Big Auto on how to transition to the future.
47. Have the Treasury Department re-finance all existing debt. Interest rates are dirt cheap.
48. Create baby bonds for every child.
49. Issue 100 year and perpetual bonds.
50. Create renewable energy bonds.
51. Use the proceeds of renewable energy bonds to allow the Treasury Department to fund subsidized loans for companies investing in cleantech, clean agro tech, solar, wind, batteries, long-term energy storage, and electric vehicles.
52. Create diversity bonds for investing in businesses founded by minorities, women, and immigrants.
53. Help small businesses bounce back.
54. Create unity bonds for investing in down-on-their-luck people.
55. Reduce and eliminate exemptions for billionaires and corporations paying less tax than the average person.
56. Lower taxes for the average person.
57. Transition Social Security away from investing in US bonds to ETFS.
58. Reduce payroll taxes.
59. If you have the guts, eliminate the income tax, and repeal the 16th Amendment.
60. Replace that with a value added tax throughout the country.
61. Help current and near-term Social Security retirees with a larger cost of living increase, to offset the current drop in wages.
62. Replace GDP with an economic and wellness scorecard (GDP is terrible, as Andrew Yang said).
63. Work with Congress for Medicare to purchase prescription drugs from authorized countries around the world.
64. Work with Congress for Medicare to negotiate drug prices lower.
65. Expand access to healthcare through Bidencare and reduce costs.
66. Work for paid leave for all new mothers and fathers.
67. Protect people with pre-existing conditions.
68. Work with Congress to renew EV and renewable energy subsidies.
69. Work with Congress to increase CAFE standards.
70. Stop destructive lawsuits filed by federal agencies (not sure if there are, but I bet there are some).
71. Pay farmers money to put land into a land bank.
72. Plant deep-rooted trees on the above land banks.
73. Implement the easiest parts of the Biden–Harris climate plan.
74. Upgrade federal infrastructure, including bridges, highways, ports, dams, transmission grid, and airports.
75. Make nickel, lithium, and rare earth minerals a matter of national security.
76. Encourage the sustainable mining of nickel and lithium within the US or friendly nations.
77. Convert public buildings, parks, and lands to have solar panels. (Carter tried that long ago on the White House and Reagan tore them down. Shame. Obama finally put solar panels on the White House again.)
78. Have a plan for converting illegal aliens to natural citizens, just like legal aliens have to do.
79. Encourage the best and brightest around the world to come to the USA as immigrants.
80. Visit Canada.
81. Visit Mexico.
82. Visit India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
83. Visit China and Southeast Asia.
84. Visit Europe.
85. Visit Russia.
86. Visit Australia and New Zealand.
87. Visit Africa.
88. Visit the Middle East.
89. Have the Army Corps of Engineers work with the Department of Energy to convert military bases around the US to use renewable energy.
90. Make it easier for cleantech companies to export their knowledge around the world.
91. Make it easier for cleantech companies to start and raise funding.
92. Have a plan to help workers losing their jobs transition to a green economy.
93. Subsidize apartment owners to build cheap, efficient, all-electric, sustainably built, rental apartment buildings in minority areas.
94. Leverage capitalism to reduce the costs and expand the production of cleantech technologies.
95. Increase building efficiency standards.
96. Pardon non-violent people in jail for drug possession.
97. Ban private federal prisons.
98. Boost the National Endowment for the Arts.
99. Help make Puerto Rico a state.
100. Advocate for Ranked Choice voting.
101. Advocate for 18 year term limits for all federal and Supreme Court justices, and then they rotate to a lower court.
102. Advocate for Congressional term limits, with current members exempt.
103. Work to overturn Citizens United.
104. Advocate for body cameras on all police departments.
105. Advocate for all police departments to have de-escalation training.
106. Reduce the militarization of the police.
107. Help local governments upgrade their electrical infrastructure, to reduce risks of forest fires.
108. Work with drought-prone states to have floating solar on all lakes and dams.
109. Create bi-directional water pipes from water rich to water poor areas.
110. Encourage vehicle-to-grid technologies.
111. Convert public fleets to electric vehicles.
112. Invest in EV charging networks across the country.
113. Encourage utilities to invest in large renewable energy projects.
114. If energy and time permit, focus on getting America back to the moon.

As always, I’m sorry for missing anything important. That’s not my intent, but in a list this large, I’ll miss something. What are ways a potential Biden–Harris administration could make an immediate impact in the harsh political climate of today and unite the country? My hopes for the new administration are to advance cleantech and clean energy, help those that are not being helped, improve people’s finances, improve their health, heal the racial tensions in this country, restore global relationships, and reform the tax code and political institutions of this country. Tall order, I know.

Note: The comments are an important part of this article. Some of the best ideas happen in the comments.

Featured image: screenshot of Joe Biden campaign video 
 


 

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Tags: Congress, Democrats, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris

About the Author

Vijay Govindan Vijay Govindan is a Cleantechnica writer part-time. Through his writing Vijay seeks to elevate the realized potential of humankind.

Against human trafficking. Tesla Model 3 LR owner. His claim to fame is Tesla and Elon have commented, liked or re-tweeted an article he wrote with the Tesla community. Just once. 😉

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/23/our-new-tesla-myths-page/

#WeChooseTesla, #RenewableEnergy and #YangGang supporter. Long Tesla shares. Has a healthy skepticism of the Q branch of the Tesla investment community. Made it to one $tslaq block list.

Follow him on Twitter @vijaygovindan17. If you read this far, wow, 👏🏽 and 🙏🏽.