Kyle Gombosi is a senior Music: Elective Studies major with a minor in journalism. KG806059@wcupa.edu
Is it still too soon?
I wanted to wait a while to write this piece — critical of Biden’s new presidential administration — so as to avoid the typical liberal vitriol of “you’re trying to help Republicans!” or “you just want Trump back!”
But we continue to inch ever closer to the end of Biden’s first 100 days, and when this article is published on day 82 of his presidency, I believe we will have an accurate picture of all the things his administration has thus far mishandled, forgotten about or ignored.
And there are many.
The promise of $2,000 stimulus checks seems a good place to start. During the Georgia Senate runoff elections, then President-elect Biden mentioned several times the $2,000 stimulus checks that would “go out the door” should both Democratic candidates win. They did, and while it took a while, a bill including stimulus checks was passed — a victory, by nearly any metric — but those checks were for $1,400, not $2,000.
The argument was that $1,400 was supposed to complete the $2,000 Americans should have gotten in the second and final stimulus bill of the Trump presidency, which included checks for $600. But promising $2,000 and then adding that context after the fact seems underhanded to many Americans — including myself — especially during a time of so much economic strife.
That $1,400 was even further jeopardized when, as reported by Business Insider, Biden indicated that he was willing to negotiate on which Americans got it. The stated goal was to make the stimulus bill bipartisan and so reject partisanship and begin healing the country, but it was fruitless; not a single Republican in the House of Representatives or the Senate voted for the newest stimulus bill.
This ineptitude and impotence on the part of the Biden administration and leading Democrats, despite the fact that they hold all the power, has become a theme. In both the issue of raising the minimum wage and forgiving federal student loans, Biden has balked for the purpose of preserving some nebulous idea of “institutions” rather than helping the American people.
Democrats originally tried to include a $15 minimum wage plan in the most recent stimulus bill as part of the very involved reconciliation process. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that its inclusion was not within the parameters of the reconciliation process, but the role of the parliamentarian is strictly advisory. The presiding officer — in most cases the vice president — has the power to overrule the decision made by the parliamentarian. Vice President Kamala Harris chose not to, despite the potential to radically change American lives for the better.
The Biden administration has also experienced massive pressure to forgive most or all federal student loans, even from prominent Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who both believe the president has the legal authority to cancel student debt via executive order. According to CNBC, Schumer has said, “you don’t need Congress. All you need is the flick of a pen.” Warren’s position is bolstered by “an analysis written by three legal experts, based at the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard Law School, who described student debt forgiveness through executive action as ‘lawful and permissible.’”
And yet, thus far, all Biden has done is instruct the Department of Education to prepare a “report” on the forgiveness of student loans.
While in terms of working for Americans here at home Biden seems content in refusing to use the full power of his office, he does not suffer that same malaise at our borders or abroad.
Liberal cries of “no more kids in cages!” echoed throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, as most liberal voters expected a Biden victory to solve the problem of the egregious treatment of immigrants — and specifically unaccompanied minors — at the southern U.S. border. In reality, little has changed: Customs and Border Patrol currently holds 15,500 unaccompanied children in custody, and in an article published on March 23, the BBC included a photo with striking similarity to the infamous pictures of “kids in cages” from the Trump era.
And finally, though he promised to end the “forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East,” in late February, Biden authorized “airstrikes in eastern Syria” according to the New York Times.
Not much else needs to be said about that besides acknowledging that the pursuit of blood and death is the one thing for which both of America’s major political parties share an enthusiasm.
And so, near the end of President Biden’s first 100 days, has anything really changed? Has Biden really changed any aspect of American life for the better? I would argue no and go further to say that an insistence that we are better off simply because Biden isn’t Trump is a delusion. The willful ignorance of American liberals, whose political engagement begins and ends at the ballot box and who obstinately refuse to hold their chosen savior accountable while Americans continue to suffer, is not a resistance to Trump and his supporters but rather a sustenance of the same conditions that invited them. It will continue to have the same effect on our politics, too, if it is allowed.
Popular pressure, the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since Vietnam, is what is necessary to bully Biden into truly working for the American people. Changing attitudes as well as opinions and erasing apathy to replace it with empathy by criticizing him wherever necessary is our only path to progress.
And if you’ve read this whole piece and still all you have to say is “at least he’s better than Trump,” if you refuse to empathize with the people Biden’s policies have harmed and will continue to harm, then no matter how thoroughly you wash your hands, American blood will stain them.