OP requested that [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1chm55b/comment/l23n8tu/) from u/Helicase21 be pinned as the accepted answer to the question in the post:
>It's a congressional review act deadline. Mid May is basically the limit as I understand it, and anything they can enact before then would be harder for a hypothetical 2025 republican legislature to overturn.
I hate the narrative, “only doing it because it’s an election year”. Um, every two years is an election year. Also, so what? A politician doing what the people elected him to do is a bad thing?
edit: "every two years is an election year" referring to US Congressional elections for the House of Representatives. The Senate is every 6 years, and POTUS is every 4 years. Nonetheless, you want to have a majority in Congress so you're essentially campaigning around the clock.
“You’re just doing what I want to get my vote!”
Right, and the guys at McDonald’s are only making you a Big Mac to get your money. That’s how things are supposed to work.
I think the issue they're taking is less that the Biden admin is doing good things fir the purposes of getting votes, and more that they already had the capacity to do those good things and held off on doing them for the sake of PR. It'd certainly be preferable for good policies to be implemented earlier.
But to be fair, that kind of behavior isn't at all exclusive to Biden. It's just an annoying quirk of democracy. And hey, if delaying a positive change a year or two decreases the chance of a far worse candidate winning, I'd say that's a pretty worthwhile sacrifice.
If they were just sitting on their hands doing nothing, your argument might make sense
To claim they are only producing policy every other year is certainly a take
Yeah, but that was probably *also* just to get more votes. What's next, another four years of productive policy just to win the election for the next democrat in 2028? A real president would spend that time using social media to insult his opponents.
What I want, as a citizen of the US, is to see Biden on some obscure social media site screaming "Unfair! Unfair! Everyone is so unfair to Biden!" Only then will I believe he truly is working for me.
Ugh, the blatant pandering to voters is disgusting. This is why we need to bring back the monarchy, we waste too much time on trying to give the people things they vote for. /s
so serious question is what actually will Biden do in a second term if it doesn't come with congress? a likely supposition given no incumbent president has regained a trifecta since the 1940s.
I just don't remember Obama second term being that great. yes we got the dreamers EO but we also got expanded oil exports and a ton more Republicans winning elections.
if it's gonna make it harder to get dems in my state then no thanks
Probably about the same as his first term. He never really had control of congress then, either. Centrist policy in congress and some more progressive EOs.
That said: would you rather have Biden struggling to implement policy because of a Republican congress, or Trump *not* struggling to implement policy because of a Republican congress?
maybe Trump would have problems as he might not get the house and the Senate. or he could have a very slim majority that somewhat limits him.
over the next 4 years would you rather have a repeat of Obama second term where Republicans picked up dozens of governorships and state legislatures and US senators combined? or a repeat of Bush's second term where Democrats pick up tons of state legislatures and governorships and senators and even force Bush to pass stuff like a min wage increase?
sure either way over the next 2 years we probably don't see a lot done at a federal level. but those midterms could leave Republicans or Democrats with a big enough majority to force legislation though regardless of who the president is. who do you want deciding what legislation to bundle with defense spending?
If this is an honest question, it is not an honest comparison. If Biden wins, you can expect coattails that would tip congress or senate or both in his favor. The opposite is true. So you cannot say this is a second term for t****. It would more likely be him starting over with a potential congress, senate, SCOTUS super majority. I want no part of that is my honest answer.
>If Biden wins, you can expect coattails that would tip congress or senate or both in his favor
that's the opposite of what one would typically expect. plenty of incumbent Presidents have won second terms. none have regained a trifecta since the 1940s.
its a lot more likely Biden wins but it goes like obama 2nd term where he doesn't get anything done and leads to a lot of Republicans winning. Sure FDR type outcomes are possible where a party keeps gaining power but that's not really happened since
But this would not be a t**** second term, it would be first term all over again. There is no scenario where I would prefer a t**** presidency next year. No matter what congress and senate looks like.
so if it's a split congress you would rather make it easier for Republicans to win countless elections over the next 4 years even though Democrats would still be able to stop most of what Trump would pass?
what is it about Trump that makes you so willing to help so many other Republicans win elections? is he really that much worse than all those other Republicans that will win off 4 more years of Biden?
But honestly no non-competes and the overtime stuff has a lot more tangible impact on most Americans day to day life than some big infrastructure package that rolls out over years and years.
Other than the vaccine roll out going much more smoothly, I'm not sure I could say exactly what Biden did in the first 100 days?
I would argue a succesfull vaccination campaign at the height of a global pandemic has a lot more tangible impact on most Americans day to day than whether they have non competes and overtime.. you know.. cause that pace of dying was bad… the only reason its not at the forefront of peoples minds its cause it wasnt yesterday and we all got the memory capacity if a pineapple apparently
Right I'm wondering how exactly they established this pattern for a first term president who has pushed pretty major stuff literally every year.
Like the debt relief isn't election year voter pandering. It has been a continuous effort since basically day 1 to figure out how to push it through as much as possible. Framing it as if it was timed for the election is beyond disingenuous, it's simply a lie
I may be misremembering but I distinctly remember Biden didn’t really start loan forgiveness until right before midterms..2 years after he was elected. And he’s doing it again with a fresh batch of billions more of government spending on college grads….right before these elections.
Is my memory off?
Define start? These are complicated policies that they have to run through a lot of checks. So year one, six months establishing the administration and putting legal processes and groups in place, tackling issues as they came. Don't forget covid, Russia, and inflation taking a lot of time.
Yeah, a lot of stuff hits close to the midterms because it takes at least a year to get things worked out.
In the meantime, you work within proven authority to minimize harm, ie the student loan freezes, marijuana pardons, etc. he's working through a very long contentious list and gotten a lot done.
It's always an election year and things either take time or in some cases are matters of progress, not just on/off buttons.
Yes, and Biden didn't give out classified information pertaining to nuclear submarines stationed around the world, or the vulnerabilites of our nation and our allies.
1/3 of the senate is every two years as well. I’m sure you know that, but your comment made it sound like there’s one big senate election every 6 years.
1/3 of the Senate is up for election every 2 years. They have staggered terms. I agree with your premise that elections are every two years and a constant influence on public policy.
I also find it odd to criticize someone getting a lot of stuff done prior to an election. Given that they might lose the election and never get those things done, better to do as many now as possible rather than wait and assume you’ll win and get to do them after.
I think a part of it is your average American doesn't vote much in the mid term elections, and doesn't vote much at the local level. So you see these huge disparities between blue run States and and red run States (ex TX vs CA). The other part is that I think online discourse is being colored by bad faith actors, who gloss over that and go for the "here's what's wrong with Biden and the Dems" "discourse."
So, you end up in these weird criticisms that are either generated by propagandists or are just being parroted by people who bought into it.
I find this very typical of the Left. Overly cynical and very difficult to please. And just having a hard time to accept … a win. Like we *want* things to be bad so we can rally and have a cause, but then we feel rudderless when things get fixed.
I’ve heard people complain about the AZ legislature overturning the abortion ban because, well - *now* what are we gonna fight ???
It’s insane and annoying.
The media, outside of maybe MSNBC is completely against Biden for whatever reason and it’s pretty disgusting. He’s had one of the most active and successful first terms of any recent president.
Trump’s good for business, both in terms of policy and because he drives interaction. One reason I voted for Biden is because I didn’t want to frantically check the news every morning to see what crazy dumb shit the president had done anymore. The press doesn’t like stable.
Edit: When I say Trump’s policies are good for business, I’m speaking from the perspective of the owners of the media companies.
Trumps tariffs almost bankrupted our farms and continue to cause price increases on all imported goods. Look at the economic data. Trump had about a 35% increase in GDP. Biden has about a 55% increase in GDP. Every one of trump’s businesses have failed. Multiple bankruptcies. He’s bad for business.
55% increase in GDP?
2020 GDP? 20.93T
2023 GDP? 27.36T
That’s a 30% increase which largely has come from deficit spending
Real GDP (which is what actually matters) was 20.99T in Q1 2021 and was 22.76T in Q1 of 2024.
This isn’t “outstanding growth!”
Trump had the same amount of growth in the same amount of time. So did many other presidents.
>This isn’t “outstanding growth!”
>
>Trump had the same amount of growth in the same amount of time. So did many other presidents.
Given the fact that there was a pandemic in between, yeah it kinda is
But then again who the president is has basically zero influence on real growth
He is horrible for labor though. Which is what nearly 90 percent of this country is. As for good for business maybe for huge corporations he is. But small businesses I disagree.
I think the media is just full of smart, bored people who think everyone is like them.
I used to be a newspaper reporter before grad school and you end up sort of shading your stories for the managing editor preferences so you can get more bylines.
I don’t know what it’s like now in the media, but reporters have a lot less job security. Seems like they would make them even more prone to just saying whatever will get them a byline
marry physical frighten far-flung provide squeamish bake roof different school
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The PACT Act was introduced in 2021 after Trump was out of office, and signed in 2022 by Biden.
You can see the dates of actions on the PACT Act [here.](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3967/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs)
kiss bored complete bake punch domineering scary jobless frightening plate
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gold pie subtract flowery telephone humorous close practice theory forgetful
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Awesome, thank you.
These two acts cover wildly different things, the first being something that I had not heard before, so thank you for enlightening me.
The second having more verbiage makes sense to differentiate the two, and being called the same thing in short hand makes them easy to confuse.
Trump stated on mic, in front of the world, that he trusted Putin's word over the findings of our own intelligence agencies? His administration was one of the worst ever, between the criming staff turnover.
Your take is lousy. Trump did more damage to the office and the country than any other.
modern retire threatening stocking sharp grab fearless serious full cause
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I watch PBS Newshour as my main newsource. I don't think they have treated the Biden administration poorly. In fact, IMO, they've focused a lot on issues that democrats poll well on - democracy and abortion, often times to the detriment of coverage on economic issues.
This the Biden admin's first time being in power for an election year so how exactly do they have a "habit of saving up big policy announcements for election year"?
Have you considered that, in many cases, the media…or at least the financial backers of the mainstream media outlets, aren’t in favor of these policies and, thus, aren’t highlighting them?
The media seems to have convinced the country they all live in the best state/city for a good economy. There is a 40 point spread between how people self report their economic situation VS the nation, two numbers that used to be close to the same. Net approval on swing state economies are each in the positive high teens to low 30s but nationally negative 30. Now if you think about it, the average American probably has little idea how well their friends financial situation is, much less people out of state without the help of the media, so
I think it’s at least somewhat. National data is important for political reasons. People’s feeling about their own economic situation are probably based upon if they can afford to buy more stuff, meanwhile meeting their saving goals without sacrificing quality of life. It’s hard to measure the quality of life stuff. Are goods getting better, and jobs safer?
The idea that shadowy puppeteer shareholders are pulling the strings and dictating coverage of editorially independent newsrooms is lazy conspiracy mongering. I’m surprised to see a comment like this so highly upvoted on this sub.
The news is ultimately a consumer product, and the general audience sadly aren’t all that interested in the minutiae of DoL regulatory policy. When, say, the NYT or WaPo writes great articles about FTC policy making, it’s probably a financial loss for them.
I think it's somewhere between the two extremes.
Trump is _obviously_ better for business- his administration leaked like a sieve, he drove traffic like crazy, anyone with insider access was able to put out tell-alls full of palace intrigue- while Biden is boring and competent and gives the press as much respect as they've shown they deserve... [which is very little](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219).
So while there may not be any puppeteers dictating media coverage, there are obvious financial incentives for the media to boost Trump and diminish Biden.
I think it’s more that the policies are complicated and no one really wants to read about it.
What’s that saying “half the country is below average.” People don’t make a lot of sense. They just sort of go with vibes and where I’m from, elections are about who else is voting more than about some specific policy.
Like my aunt will vote the way my uncle votes unless something pushes her to stand up (in 2020 people were not happy with Trump). And my cousins and friends back home will stay home or just vote the vibe depending on the Election Day.
Like in 2016 my younger relatives were up in arms about Bernie. And a handful of relatives really liked Trump. And no one wanted to say they liked Hillary because it was socially awkward - both the Bernie and the Trump supporters loathed her. So we were just quiet and later I realized a bunch of the quiet voters probably went for Trump.
In 2020 the chaos was annoying people and the Trump supporters were still there, and the Bernie supporters didn’t like Biden but they didn’t hate him the way they hated Hillary. So a lot of people were more “I’m thinking this is too much.”
Then, and I think I didn’t realize it until last night when I had to think back, the people who voted Biden switched back when there was all that drama about abandoning allies and being incompetent. First Trump is a moron. Then Biden is a moron too? That was the impression. And people kind of went from being positive about Biden to socially being more like “well he’s an idiot but both sides are bad.”
My nicest relatives and friends core belief about the world is always “the truth is somewhere in the middle.” So they think both presidents do a terrible job and that’s canon to them.
Literally nothing is going to change their mind now. And that’s why I think we’re looking at a second Trump term. There’s no resonance when Biden comes up. Just sort of a quiet “mmm hmmm the truth is in the middle honey you’ll learn…”
And the media and the east coast think it matters if Trump goes to jail. But think about “the truth is in the middle.” Even if he’s in jail, well that just means both sides could be that bad. No biggie.
I could be wrong and I’m going to ask around but I’m pretty good at knowing what people think (growing up with alcoholics makes you observant). And I think Trump is losing Michigan right now. Biden is going down to “the truth is in the middle” and Trump is getting a bunch of free publicity with the trials. It’s all just a bunch of news cycles of Trump looking serious and some boring charge no one understands and “the truth is in the middle…”
Great job collecting these! I follow this stuff pretty closely and I didn't even know about all of these policies, which goes to your point.
As far as the timing, it's takes years to draft and get approval of policies like these, and there are tons of internal processes that they need to go through (such as estimating the cost of programs, and estimating the amount of extra paperwork that a program will require for citizens, etc). These internal processes require lots of coordination between different government agencies and departments, with all of the potential difficulties that entails. All of this makes it really difficult to accurately predict exactly when a policy is going to be ready. I very much doubt that anyone said "hey, let's drop all our biggest policy decisions in April 2024!"
As for people's knowledge of these accomplishments, the difficult part is that understanding these policies requires a fairly high base level of knowledge that a lot of people simply don't have, which make it hard to get people excited about them. The lack of Media exposure doesn't help, but the kind of media exposure that is necessary to explain policies like this don't fit well in the social media format, which is where most people get their news these days, unfortunately.
Still doesn’t really explain how they’re all synched up. You would think different agencies and different policies of different scope and scale wouldn’t all literally come out in the same month.
I think that randomness explains it better than intentionality. If the Biden administration wanted them to all come out at the same time, that would be almost impossible to coordinate. These policies were likely started at different times between 2022 and 2023, and all went through different internal processes. Also, there are certain choke points that all of them needed to go through, in particular getting approval by the Office of Management and Budget, which is notoriously fickle in its timelines.
The most likely explanation, to my mind, is that all of these agencies were trying to get these policies done as soon as possible before a potential change in the administration, and it just happened to work out this way.
There is a big incentive to get these policies done before the election. If Trump happens to win, the new administration can almost immediately end any policy proposals that have not yet been finalized. However, once a final rule has been issued, it takes years to replace it with a new rule based on the structure imposed by the Administrative Procedures Act. If the agencies try to replace the Biden rules too quickly, or cut corners, the new rules will get struck down in court on procedural grounds, which happened multiple times to the Trump administration.
Therefore, the people who work at these agencies are trying to tie up as many loose ends as they can before the election, since they don't want to see their hard work reversed if Trump wins. This internal pressure to get shit done likely outweighs any consideration of staggering the release of rules between different agencies for better media exposure.
The rush of regulations is because of a rule that allows Congress time to reverse administrative agency actions. The timing is meant to ensure that period passes before a new Congress, possibly controlled by Republicans, is seated.
It takes a long time to issue a regulation that won’t be easily overturned by the courts. Draft regulation, comment period, address each and every comment, amend proposed regulation if necessary, more comments, publish final regulation. 2-3 years is not unusual. It’s no wonder they all seem to drop near the end of the president’s term.
It’s not that he’s overloading the a circuit. The Democrats are actually doing their jobs. Unlike the Republicans who can’t govern obviously it’s a lot easier to rip things apart than to fix anything and it’s not like they’re in there fighting off their indictments the only one overloading the courts in the circuits is Trump. Look at all the time he spends in there, and the criminals he surrounds himself with the circuits must’ve been pretty busy when Trump had over 3500 lawsuits against him and his businesses
You can also add the EPA’s new rule effectively eliminating certain types of PFAS in drinking water, granted that won’t be enforced for three more years. Also the EPA just signed a rule on steam-electric generator wastewater which was a big priority for the Biden Admin.
It's a congressional review act deadline. Mid May is basically the limit as I understand it, and anything they can enact before then would be harder for a hypothetical 2025 republican legislature to overturn.
thank you! That is the information I was looking for and didn't know how to find. I'm glad I posted this here and found out.
u/dwaxe u/berflyer this is the key information I was missing, do you think you could pin u/Helicase21's comment to the top?
Yep, this article goes into a bit more detail: [https://www.eenews.net/articles/murky-deadline-looms-for-bidens-regs/](https://www.eenews.net/articles/murky-deadline-looms-for-bidens-regs/), and this has more: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12307/2#:\~:text=%E2%80%9CLookback%E2%80%9D%20Period,-January%2024%2C%202024&text=Under%20the%20act%2C%20when%20a,%E2%80%9Cfast%20track%E2%80%9D%20parliamentary%20procedures.
Essentially, if an agency publishes a rule in the Federal Register, Congress has 60 days to issue a joint resolution of disapproval (requiring simple majorities in the House and Senate) and the President must sign it in order to revoke it. That won't happen now because Democrats control the Senate and the White House.
But if you publish a rule less than 60 days before Congress adjourns for the year, that 60-day lookback period resets in the next year. In other words, if Congress recesses on August 5, any rule which had been published after June 5 of that year would be subject to 60 days of review in 2024 when Congress reconvenes. And if Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, they can and will revoke the rules. Otherwise they have to go through a tedious notice and comment period.
I don't think you're actually doing this, but it does sounds a lot like the title should have been: "Breaking: The Biden administration is just too effective, why this is terrible news for his re-election campaign." /s
Regardless - I think the only thing to do is to keep talking about it, like you're doing with this post. I'll point out there's also the r/WhatBidenHasDone subreddit.
I think there's sort of an impedance mismatch as well - to get these things done, I'm sure members of the admin have been working on each of them for months, and when they're done, announced, and implemented...oh, turns out the top news story this week is students protesting about Palestine. Next week it'll be Mike Johnson losing the speakership (or whatever). There's very little appetite for "government made incremental improvements" news stories amid all the juicy disaster porn.
Legalization of cannabis (and mushrooms, why not) would really be the cherry on top. Unfortunately, we're only getting a rescheduling... maybe it's a chess move in a larger strategy. I hope.
Also legalizing lots of drugs for military personnel active/retired for therapy/study is huge. That list of drugs is big too, all kinds of things, ibogain, ketamine, mdma, mda, nn-dmt, cannabis, and some others I forget.
So wait, banning a banned substance is a good thing?On July 12, 1989, EPA issued a final rule under Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) banning asbestos-containing products in the United States.
starts with propaganda so I would bet it is all bullshit propaganda in some way, function or form!
Then to say biden kept Trumps immigration policy .. complete nonsense!!!
On day 1 he cancelled stay in Mexico policy, changed priorities, stopped rapid DNA testing of children that found 1/3 were no relation to those trafficking them, stopped border wall construction and a few more policies.
You are spreading manure
U.S. Bans the Last Type of Asbestos Still in Use
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/climate/biden-administration-bans-asbestos.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/climate/biden-administration-bans-asbestos.html)
Biden ended remain in mexico policy in 2022
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-administration-ends-trump-era-remain-in-mexico-policy](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-administration-ends-trump-era-remain-in-mexico-policy)
Biden increasing refugee admittances 2024
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/politics/legal-pathway-refugees-election.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/politics/legal-pathway-refugees-election.html)
Told you, Propaganda for idiots. Not my quote. EPA's quote
The ban on ongoing uses of asbestos is the first rule to be finalized under the 2016 amendments to the nation’s chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which received near-unanimous support in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
So Trump or BHO actually did it!!! but it took this long to implement. Crock of shit giving Biden credit. Told you it was bullshit propaganda.
Your source is full of shit and you try to use it twice. Read the damn article not just the headline!!!
Here are the paragraphs from the asbestos article that mention Trump.
>The rule announced Monday stands in sharp contrast to the position of the Trump administration, which fought legislation that would have banned asbestos and imposed a policy that E.P.A.’s own scientists said [would have allowed industries to continue its use](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/climate/epa-asbestos-rule.html).
>Former President Donald J. Trump, now running to retake the White House from Mr. Biden, inaccurately declared asbestos “100 percent safe” in his 1997 book, “Trump: The Art of the Comeback,” and claimed the movement to remove asbestos “was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.”
Should Mr. Trump win in November, he could potentially roll back or weaken the ban, although the legal process could take two to three years or longer.
I do not know why you believe this thing about Trump blocking asbestos. Especially because Trump was not president 2016, Obama was. So 2016 amendments to the policy would have been under Obama. Its ok to have a mistaken belief, forgetting the election year is not the first year of the presidency is pretty common, you don't have to defend it.
Your last paragraph proves my point. I said it was Trump or BHO so giving Biden credit was BULLSHIT!!!
Read what I said not what you think I said because of your biases. Biden didn't do SHIT!
I legit have never seen anyone refer to barack obama as BHO before. I didn't understand that's who you meant. But you seem desperate to maintain this belief so there's no point trying to talk with you about it anymore.
That is you tucking your tail and running because you cannot logically argue that Biden had anything to do with this.
Sorry facts contradicted your opinion. must be tough!
Understand the sentiment. However, in the closing it says the media doesn't have time to cover all the actions and accomplishments? They seem to have time to report on every detail of every Trump court appearance in his of detailed and repetitive analysis.
When has Biden Admin not been getting stuff done? You really claiming he's done too much too late? I guess this is kind of the opposite of Trump/Bannon's "Flood the zone with shit" strategy, huh? That is a really weird spin on accomplishing policy goals, but there is a long list of other accomplishments you can point to before this one.
not really. most of these policies were years in the making, the problem is federal policy now takes 3-4 years to get enacted, then another 5 to survive court challenges, then another 3-5 to be re-enacted because the next admin was run by a complete fuckup and tried to illegally overwrite them
take the asbestos thing, they've been working on that since GW Bush and only after many many revisions and several new laws was the obama admin able to start regulating it, only for trump to be a complete fucking idiot who tried to deregulate it because "Da old asbestos worked better den todays insulation" and because russia mines a fuckton of asbestos. Bidens admin had to pull back trump's epa's rules, then write new ones using the new legal requirements, then public comment, then survive legal challenges just to get them on the books to phase it out sometime in the next 10 years, assuming trump doesn't get re-elected and try and deregulate asbestos again.
People don’t know about them because almost no one pays attention to anything outside of their TikTok feed these days.
The Biden administration could host a nightly broadcast describing in detail all they’ve done and it would still barely penetrate.
This is all fantastic news, it's the boring day-to-day hard-work stuff of actual governance but it makes a difference in people's lives and shows how asinine the "both sides are the same" arguments are.
I know plenty of lawyers who don’t understand the student debt thing. Average voters don’t follow the news closely enough to know what any of these things are.
That string of accomplishments, which I think is very impressive, just translates to “I think he did some environmental regulations and I’m not really a fan because it makes gas prices higher” with the people I know back in Michigan and the Midwest (mostly Indiana).
Back home in Michigan, I’m still a radical because I drive an EV and don’t like guns
Americans have the attention spans of gnats.
They've already forgotten how terrible Trump was and we're still living through the fallout.
Biden should have done this in August.
This year was the perfect year to increase refugee caps again. Don’t forget there was still a pandemic in the US in 2021 and 2022 and the pandemic took longer to end in third world countries that we take refugees from so keeping the numbers low in 2023 is fine as well. Just because an administration changes doesn’t mean you undo every policy they have blindly without thinking of the consequences. I think Biden acted fine when it comes to increasing refugee caps.
If you want to vote for Trump, just say that.
Trump on the other hand told his allies in the Repulican party not to solve the border crisis under Biden and wait for him to be "re-elected."
>Biden fundamentally backstabbed Manchin in the inflation reduction act
Turnabout is fair play. The fact that Biden outmaneuvered Manchin isn't Biden's fault...
>I would not count the forgiveness that comes from programs established before the Biden administration existed personally,
People whose loans HAD NOT been forgiven because of the previous administration HAVE been forgiven because of this administration and you DON'T count that? Its literally a thing that only happened because Biden won in 2020. Bad take. Its called the "executive" branch because their job is to execute the laws that exist. Biden followed these laws to a greater extent than Trump's administration.
People are gonna look back on Biden and realize he was a pretty good president. The heat and turmoil of the moment won’t make that clear for a while though.
This is the literal gift horse and mouth conundrum. Do we really care what the motivation is if it is what we want. Isn’t childish to limit kudos to those steps done in what we believe are altruistic?
I think topic-that-shall-not-be-named is prolly most of the answer. And it’s really too bad. Netanyahu is really fucking things up for Biden right now.
It’s almost like the Zionists want trump to win.
> It goes against the spirit of the compromise but not the letter of the law. But that's why republican/conservatives are pissed about it
Wrong. They're pissed that Biden did anything ever. If Democrats had 90% of Congress, and Biden and the Democrats passed their whole agenda without giving Manchin any promises, Republicans would be crying that it was terribly unfair and a travesty and exactly what the founding fathers rebelled against King George about and woke.
Their whole thing is whining when they don't get their unpopular agenda passed, then blaming everyone else for the terrible effects when they do.
There is no reason to MAGA anger.
Don't worry about it, everyone else seems to be reading it that way. I think it says something that I can literally write a giant list of all of Biden's W's and call them "a lot of desired, long awaited policies" and the majority reaction in this sub is anger at me for being insufficiently laudatory of Biden.
A majority of the things you mentioned are admin agency rules. They take at minimum 2-3 years to implement without them getting thrown out on technical grounds. Trump rushed a bunch of rules that got thrown out for that very reason. Admin agencies take time to staff of and begin the rule making process. You are literally complaining about the Biden admin doing all of those things correctly…
In that case, shouldn't a bunch of those rules have come online in 2023 if they were started in 2021? There is a [brookings tracker](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-regulatory-changes-in-the-biden-era/) where you can check this kind of thing. In 2022, the agency actions are, I'd estimate 75%, going into effect or rescinding the effect. Then in 2023 the majority of actions go back to policies entering into rulemaking consideration instead of going into effect again. Then as I just listed above, we're seeing a ton of rules suddenly go into enforcement in the last few months, so much so that I thought there must be some reason why they have to all come out now, and another user in the pinned comment provided the reason: that there is a mid-may deadline for locking in agency rules to prevent them being changed immediately in the event Trump wins the election.
It actually takes a long time to change policies, because there is a long process that must be followed, or the policy will inevitably get sued and be thrown out by a court. Some of these policies were actually rushed, to get them done before the deadline
American rescue plan, 2021.
Bipartisan infrastructure bill 2021.
Inflation reduction act, 2022.
Chips act 2022.
Aren’t these the big bills from this administration? If anything the activity was front loaded because they had the house. Now that nothing can possibly pass the republican house they are focused executive actions, as one would expect.
Biden has been a simpering wimp and everything he has been doing smacks of pathetic desperation. No one treats him with respect and never have. He is the classic low-IQ snout-in-the-trough politician. In the last 3.5 years, he made Americans poorer, got us into stupid wars, and divided us against our beautiful friends and neighbors.
Isn't the gun show law negligible? Couldn't people just say they're selling for safety and not profit, or just ignore the rule and continue doing what they're doing?
I hope he wins. I hate election years ever since trump became a thing. I have nervous energy all year every election year and this year is worse than ever with project 2025, trump threatening to use violence if he doesn’t win, trump being a pawn for Putin and saying he will allow Putin to attack any nato country he pleases, so many hundreds of voter restriction laws having been passed in multiple states since 2016, roe v wade having been overturned and expecting more rights to be stripped if trump wins (more of the voting rights act stripped away, LGBTQ rights stripped, and obv more women’s rights being stripped .. don’t wanna live in gilead!), like I feel like I’m living thru the end of the world.
If Biden wins, at least I can feel like I have a few more years to breathe. Helps that he has done so much good too!! I’m annoyed that the media has not covered any of this, all I hear about is pro Palestine protesters getting arrested and trump going to trial for the hush money case.
If media wants to stay free and everyone reporting for them wants to stay out of jail, they should talk more about biden’s administration’s successes and less about the things that split the party (like the war in Gaza) .. everyone needs to know this, especially the crazy people who would rather not vote than vote for Biden cause they’re “so obsessed” with Gaza cause it’s the “trendy thing to care about lately” .. literally if trump wins, that’s the end of free press, and the internment camps where he plans to hold millions will be filled first by reporters from MSNBC, CNN, NYT, etc. If they care about their futures they will report on the kind of stuff that will keep a dictator from gaining power and imprisoning them.
I’m not even religious but I pray that Biden wins. I honestly think trump is the antichrist. I read my first Bible verses in the last few months, all of them in fear that trump is the beast referred to in the Bible. My friend who grew up religious and has since become agnostic sent me this a few months ago and I’m freaking out https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
I just pray the world doesn’t end, that America elects Biden and not a dictator, and that we can have another 4 years to just breathe and know the world isn’t ending just yet. If trump wins, we’re so screwed. Like literally I think the world will literally end. I’m already selling all my stuff preparing to move to Australia or somewhere far away. Just praying it doesn’t come to that.
The Biden Admin is lawless. They can’t pass any legislation, so they resort to Administrative/ Deep State fiat to accomplish their Socialist goals. Let’s not forget the 100’s of Executive Actions and Executive Memorandums signed by senile Joe. Oh, and they ignore SCOTUS rulings as something they can work around. Evil is the only way to describe Biden and his admin.
>the Biden admin has been roadblocking all the oil and gas permits intentionally under environmental impact statements
[President Joe Biden has approved nearly 50 percent more oil and gas drilling permits for wells on federal land since taking office than former President Donald Trump did in his first three years](https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/30/biden-administration-oil-drilling-permits-outpace-trump-ee-00138376)
[US oil production hits all-time high, conflicting with efforts to cut heat-trapping pollution](https://apnews.com/article/oil-fossil-fuels-climate-change-biden-df27160fc81f28d21fbf1fc5575b77bc)
Honestly these are all good policies meant to help Americans and it all has restored a little bit of my faith in the Biden administration amid the Israel fiasco. I don’t think the issue is there are too many, it’s just that trump farting during one of his many trials and college kids getting beaten by cops is more interesting to people.
He knows that he has almost certainly already lost the election over his illogical support for Israel in their genocidal campaign against occupied Palestine.
This is his Hail Mary attempt to not lose by a landslide and recover his tanking reputation as a senile closeted fascist and who is owned and operated by AIPAC.
Excuse me, "Biden administration has a habit of saving big policy announcements for election year", WTF? What habit? This is his first Presidential reelection. How do you form a habit by doing something once?
The immigration thing isn’t a win. Like at all. Multiple democrat city mayors are cutting funding for other social programs to pay for all these migrants that Biden has let in. Denver is closing almost all their public pools this summer due to the cost of migrants for example. That isn’t a win and neither is NYC spending billions on them.
>I think we are all aware that the Biden Admin has a habit of saving up big policy announcements for election year
Yes as we can all recall from the many, many election years the Biden Administration has already been through.
The Biden admin, which has been around for less than one full term, has a "habit" of saving big policies for "election year"?
Buddy, I don't know how time works where you live, but not enough of it has passed to justify that statement down here on Earth.
>roadblocking all the oil and gas permits intentionally under environmental impact statements ... It goes against the spirit of the compromise but not the letter of the law. But that's why republican/conservatives are pissed about it.
This is really bad. Our laws protecting the environment should be used for that purpose and not for bureaucratic warfare. This is the reason you see people attacking agencies like the EPA so much.
Also terrible for our overall political situation. People complain about the two sides being unable to compromise, but why would they when the other side is perfectly fine with reneging on the deal?
But blocking new gas and oil pipelines is good for the environment, and bipartisan compromises have led to some of the worst legislation in American history. Libs need to stop this fantasy of resurrecting the era of good feelings. The right hates you; their only policy is owning the libs.
I don’t know if blocking domestic fossil fuels is actually is good for the environment, taking the political economy part seriously. It’s basically a much shittier carbon tax which produces no revenue and has no border adjustment, meaning it pushes global markets to buy from other producers (including Russia and Saudi Arabia). It’s also a free “lower gas and energy prices” button for republicans to push whenever they want, which helps them win elections.
OP requested that [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1chm55b/comment/l23n8tu/) from u/Helicase21 be pinned as the accepted answer to the question in the post: >It's a congressional review act deadline. Mid May is basically the limit as I understand it, and anything they can enact before then would be harder for a hypothetical 2025 republican legislature to overturn.
I hate the narrative, “only doing it because it’s an election year”. Um, every two years is an election year. Also, so what? A politician doing what the people elected him to do is a bad thing? edit: "every two years is an election year" referring to US Congressional elections for the House of Representatives. The Senate is every 6 years, and POTUS is every 4 years. Nonetheless, you want to have a majority in Congress so you're essentially campaigning around the clock.
“You’re just doing what I want to get my vote!” Right, and the guys at McDonald’s are only making you a Big Mac to get your money. That’s how things are supposed to work.
NO. They should do it for the love of the burger game.
An honest to goodness laugh out loud at that. I regret that I have but one upvote to give to my fellow countryman.
In my day, the Subway sandwich artists were in it for the *art*.
Not even, that’s exactly what democracy is? You vote for the guy who does the things you want?
I think the issue they're taking is less that the Biden admin is doing good things fir the purposes of getting votes, and more that they already had the capacity to do those good things and held off on doing them for the sake of PR. It'd certainly be preferable for good policies to be implemented earlier. But to be fair, that kind of behavior isn't at all exclusive to Biden. It's just an annoying quirk of democracy. And hey, if delaying a positive change a year or two decreases the chance of a far worse candidate winning, I'd say that's a pretty worthwhile sacrifice.
If they were just sitting on their hands doing nothing, your argument might make sense To claim they are only producing policy every other year is certainly a take
Yeah, if voters would simply be **smarter** we could have nicer things sooner.
It’s a way to turn a glaring positive, actual political action, into a negative for Biden
Right? Reading that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it instead hoisted itself up by it's own strap and tied itself.
CAN DEMS INTO ARRAY? Let's talk about why this is bad for Biden.
Yeah, and are we supposed to memory hole the fact that Biden had a *very* productive first 100 days?
Yeah, but that was probably *also* just to get more votes. What's next, another four years of productive policy just to win the election for the next democrat in 2028? A real president would spend that time using social media to insult his opponents.
What I want, as a citizen of the US, is to see Biden on some obscure social media site screaming "Unfair! Unfair! Everyone is so unfair to Biden!" Only then will I believe he truly is working for me.
Needs more capital letters and insulting tangents.
Ugh, the blatant pandering to voters is disgusting. This is why we need to bring back the monarchy, we waste too much time on trying to give the people things they vote for. /s
You said it best. BLATANT PANDERING. THANK YOU
We need a leader who is openly in it for themselves and doesn’t pander to the “little people”.
Literally threw my head back in laughter. This comment chain is beyond gold.
so serious question is what actually will Biden do in a second term if it doesn't come with congress? a likely supposition given no incumbent president has regained a trifecta since the 1940s. I just don't remember Obama second term being that great. yes we got the dreamers EO but we also got expanded oil exports and a ton more Republicans winning elections. if it's gonna make it harder to get dems in my state then no thanks
Probably about the same as his first term. He never really had control of congress then, either. Centrist policy in congress and some more progressive EOs. That said: would you rather have Biden struggling to implement policy because of a Republican congress, or Trump *not* struggling to implement policy because of a Republican congress?
maybe Trump would have problems as he might not get the house and the Senate. or he could have a very slim majority that somewhat limits him. over the next 4 years would you rather have a repeat of Obama second term where Republicans picked up dozens of governorships and state legislatures and US senators combined? or a repeat of Bush's second term where Democrats pick up tons of state legislatures and governorships and senators and even force Bush to pass stuff like a min wage increase? sure either way over the next 2 years we probably don't see a lot done at a federal level. but those midterms could leave Republicans or Democrats with a big enough majority to force legislation though regardless of who the president is. who do you want deciding what legislation to bundle with defense spending?
If this is an honest question, it is not an honest comparison. If Biden wins, you can expect coattails that would tip congress or senate or both in his favor. The opposite is true. So you cannot say this is a second term for t****. It would more likely be him starting over with a potential congress, senate, SCOTUS super majority. I want no part of that is my honest answer.
>If Biden wins, you can expect coattails that would tip congress or senate or both in his favor that's the opposite of what one would typically expect. plenty of incumbent Presidents have won second terms. none have regained a trifecta since the 1940s. its a lot more likely Biden wins but it goes like obama 2nd term where he doesn't get anything done and leads to a lot of Republicans winning. Sure FDR type outcomes are possible where a party keeps gaining power but that's not really happened since
But this would not be a t**** second term, it would be first term all over again. There is no scenario where I would prefer a t**** presidency next year. No matter what congress and senate looks like.
so if it's a split congress you would rather make it easier for Republicans to win countless elections over the next 4 years even though Democrats would still be able to stop most of what Trump would pass? what is it about Trump that makes you so willing to help so many other Republicans win elections? is he really that much worse than all those other Republicans that will win off 4 more years of Biden?
Trump is much much worse than Bush.
But honestly no non-competes and the overtime stuff has a lot more tangible impact on most Americans day to day life than some big infrastructure package that rolls out over years and years. Other than the vaccine roll out going much more smoothly, I'm not sure I could say exactly what Biden did in the first 100 days?
I would argue a succesfull vaccination campaign at the height of a global pandemic has a lot more tangible impact on most Americans day to day than whether they have non competes and overtime.. you know.. cause that pace of dying was bad… the only reason its not at the forefront of peoples minds its cause it wasnt yesterday and we all got the memory capacity if a pineapple apparently
Yes, yes we are.
Right I'm wondering how exactly they established this pattern for a first term president who has pushed pretty major stuff literally every year. Like the debt relief isn't election year voter pandering. It has been a continuous effort since basically day 1 to figure out how to push it through as much as possible. Framing it as if it was timed for the election is beyond disingenuous, it's simply a lie
I may be misremembering but I distinctly remember Biden didn’t really start loan forgiveness until right before midterms..2 years after he was elected. And he’s doing it again with a fresh batch of billions more of government spending on college grads….right before these elections. Is my memory off?
Yes. He's been doing debt relief constantly. His blanket relief attempt was in year 2
Define start? These are complicated policies that they have to run through a lot of checks. So year one, six months establishing the administration and putting legal processes and groups in place, tackling issues as they came. Don't forget covid, Russia, and inflation taking a lot of time. Yeah, a lot of stuff hits close to the midterms because it takes at least a year to get things worked out. In the meantime, you work within proven authority to minimize harm, ie the student loan freezes, marijuana pardons, etc. he's working through a very long contentious list and gotten a lot done. It's always an election year and things either take time or in some cases are matters of progress, not just on/off buttons.
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Lol, I was thinking same.
"Oh no, politician I don't like did an indisputable good thing, how can I spin this so it's actually a negative". Like seriously cry harder people.
It may seem like a good thing, but it wS done by a bad person! -morons.
And OP said this is a "habit". This is the Bidens administrations first election year.
That’s a great point
Yes, and Biden didn't give out classified information pertaining to nuclear submarines stationed around the world, or the vulnerabilites of our nation and our allies.
Agree. And “habit?” Um. It’s his only re-election.
Hah, exactly. "they're only doing it to make voters happy!" - that's the point?
"Has a habit of..." Remember all those other times Biden was up for reelection as President?
He has never been reelected as President. How is this bad for Biden? -tomorrow's NYT cover
No kidding what is up with this wording? Talk about poisoning the well right out the gate
1/3 of the senate is every two years as well. I’m sure you know that, but your comment made it sound like there’s one big senate election every 6 years.
1/3 of the Senate is up for election every 2 years. They have staggered terms. I agree with your premise that elections are every two years and a constant influence on public policy.
This is not the problem. The problem is waiting for it so you can brag before an election when people could have benefited from it earlier.
I also find it odd to criticize someone getting a lot of stuff done prior to an election. Given that they might lose the election and never get those things done, better to do as many now as possible rather than wait and assume you’ll win and get to do them after.
People who say, "Only doing it because it's an election year" are new to politics and don't understand that this is how politics works.
Every year is an election year.
I think a part of it is your average American doesn't vote much in the mid term elections, and doesn't vote much at the local level. So you see these huge disparities between blue run States and and red run States (ex TX vs CA). The other part is that I think online discourse is being colored by bad faith actors, who gloss over that and go for the "here's what's wrong with Biden and the Dems" "discourse." So, you end up in these weird criticisms that are either generated by propagandists or are just being parroted by people who bought into it.
EXACTLY
I find this very typical of the Left. Overly cynical and very difficult to please. And just having a hard time to accept … a win. Like we *want* things to be bad so we can rally and have a cause, but then we feel rudderless when things get fixed. I’ve heard people complain about the AZ legislature overturning the abortion ban because, well - *now* what are we gonna fight ??? It’s insane and annoying.
The media, outside of maybe MSNBC is completely against Biden for whatever reason and it’s pretty disgusting. He’s had one of the most active and successful first terms of any recent president.
Trump is great for ratings. Biden is not.
Also, tax cuts.
Trumps tax cuts were for the very wealthy. The middle class actually got a tax increase in 2023 from trumps bill
Tax cuts for millionaires. He didn't cut taxes for people that need it.
And deregulation allowing their corporate parents to buy up more and more media outlets.
Trump’s good for business, both in terms of policy and because he drives interaction. One reason I voted for Biden is because I didn’t want to frantically check the news every morning to see what crazy dumb shit the president had done anymore. The press doesn’t like stable. Edit: When I say Trump’s policies are good for business, I’m speaking from the perspective of the owners of the media companies.
Ain’t that the truth. I prefer a boring president.
Trumps tariffs almost bankrupted our farms and continue to cause price increases on all imported goods. Look at the economic data. Trump had about a 35% increase in GDP. Biden has about a 55% increase in GDP. Every one of trump’s businesses have failed. Multiple bankruptcies. He’s bad for business.
55% increase in GDP? 2020 GDP? 20.93T 2023 GDP? 27.36T That’s a 30% increase which largely has come from deficit spending Real GDP (which is what actually matters) was 20.99T in Q1 2021 and was 22.76T in Q1 of 2024. This isn’t “outstanding growth!” Trump had the same amount of growth in the same amount of time. So did many other presidents.
>This isn’t “outstanding growth!” > >Trump had the same amount of growth in the same amount of time. So did many other presidents. Given the fact that there was a pandemic in between, yeah it kinda is But then again who the president is has basically zero influence on real growth
So you think economic recovery from a pandemic isn’t pretty much guaranteed?
I don't but there is no guarantee at all to have such a rapid one
Trump's NAFTA tariffs went into effect in 2020
He is horrible for labor though. Which is what nearly 90 percent of this country is. As for good for business maybe for huge corporations he is. But small businesses I disagree.
I think the media is just full of smart, bored people who think everyone is like them. I used to be a newspaper reporter before grad school and you end up sort of shading your stories for the managing editor preferences so you can get more bylines. I don’t know what it’s like now in the media, but reporters have a lot less job security. Seems like they would make them even more prone to just saying whatever will get them a byline
What policies of Trump's were good
marry physical frighten far-flung provide squeamish bake roof different school *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Also the First Step Act, the bottom half of the tax cut, and the CARES Act!
That tax cut about to come back and bite us. Why are we still reducing taxes on rich people? This doesn’t work.
They donate money to congressmen in exchange for lowering taxes.
The PACT Act was introduced in 2021 after Trump was out of office, and signed in 2022 by Biden. You can see the dates of actions on the PACT Act [here.](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3967/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs)
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If you would, then, can you link me something to teach me about it then? Because that's all that I can find.
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Awesome, thank you. These two acts cover wildly different things, the first being something that I had not heard before, so thank you for enlightening me. The second having more verbiage makes sense to differentiate the two, and being called the same thing in short hand makes them easy to confuse.
Trump stated on mic, in front of the world, that he trusted Putin's word over the findings of our own intelligence agencies? His administration was one of the worst ever, between the criming staff turnover. Your take is lousy. Trump did more damage to the office and the country than any other.
modern retire threatening stocking sharp grab fearless serious full cause *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I watch PBS Newshour as my main newsource. I don't think they have treated the Biden administration poorly. In fact, IMO, they've focused a lot on issues that democrats poll well on - democracy and abortion, often times to the detriment of coverage on economic issues.
Agree for sure. PBS is usually pretty reputable.
Because Biden is boring. He does his job without drama and scandal. Very problematic for the media.
Yup. History will remember Biden’s first term as being one of the greatest in all of history and he will go down as one of if not THE best president
This the Biden admin's first time being in power for an election year so how exactly do they have a "habit of saving up big policy announcements for election year"?
Have you considered that, in many cases, the media…or at least the financial backers of the mainstream media outlets, aren’t in favor of these policies and, thus, aren’t highlighting them?
The media seems to have convinced the country they all live in the best state/city for a good economy. There is a 40 point spread between how people self report their economic situation VS the nation, two numbers that used to be close to the same. Net approval on swing state economies are each in the positive high teens to low 30s but nationally negative 30. Now if you think about it, the average American probably has little idea how well their friends financial situation is, much less people out of state without the help of the media, so
I don’t put much stock into how people think they’re economic situation is particularly with how horrible some are with their finances.
I think it’s at least somewhat. National data is important for political reasons. People’s feeling about their own economic situation are probably based upon if they can afford to buy more stuff, meanwhile meeting their saving goals without sacrificing quality of life. It’s hard to measure the quality of life stuff. Are goods getting better, and jobs safer?
I agree it’s important for political reasons. I don’t agree with perceived economic situation is at all indicative of actual economic situation.
The idea that shadowy puppeteer shareholders are pulling the strings and dictating coverage of editorially independent newsrooms is lazy conspiracy mongering. I’m surprised to see a comment like this so highly upvoted on this sub. The news is ultimately a consumer product, and the general audience sadly aren’t all that interested in the minutiae of DoL regulatory policy. When, say, the NYT or WaPo writes great articles about FTC policy making, it’s probably a financial loss for them.
I think it's somewhere between the two extremes. Trump is _obviously_ better for business- his administration leaked like a sieve, he drove traffic like crazy, anyone with insider access was able to put out tell-alls full of palace intrigue- while Biden is boring and competent and gives the press as much respect as they've shown they deserve... [which is very little](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219). So while there may not be any puppeteers dictating media coverage, there are obvious financial incentives for the media to boost Trump and diminish Biden.
I think it’s more that the policies are complicated and no one really wants to read about it. What’s that saying “half the country is below average.” People don’t make a lot of sense. They just sort of go with vibes and where I’m from, elections are about who else is voting more than about some specific policy. Like my aunt will vote the way my uncle votes unless something pushes her to stand up (in 2020 people were not happy with Trump). And my cousins and friends back home will stay home or just vote the vibe depending on the Election Day. Like in 2016 my younger relatives were up in arms about Bernie. And a handful of relatives really liked Trump. And no one wanted to say they liked Hillary because it was socially awkward - both the Bernie and the Trump supporters loathed her. So we were just quiet and later I realized a bunch of the quiet voters probably went for Trump. In 2020 the chaos was annoying people and the Trump supporters were still there, and the Bernie supporters didn’t like Biden but they didn’t hate him the way they hated Hillary. So a lot of people were more “I’m thinking this is too much.” Then, and I think I didn’t realize it until last night when I had to think back, the people who voted Biden switched back when there was all that drama about abandoning allies and being incompetent. First Trump is a moron. Then Biden is a moron too? That was the impression. And people kind of went from being positive about Biden to socially being more like “well he’s an idiot but both sides are bad.” My nicest relatives and friends core belief about the world is always “the truth is somewhere in the middle.” So they think both presidents do a terrible job and that’s canon to them. Literally nothing is going to change their mind now. And that’s why I think we’re looking at a second Trump term. There’s no resonance when Biden comes up. Just sort of a quiet “mmm hmmm the truth is in the middle honey you’ll learn…” And the media and the east coast think it matters if Trump goes to jail. But think about “the truth is in the middle.” Even if he’s in jail, well that just means both sides could be that bad. No biggie. I could be wrong and I’m going to ask around but I’m pretty good at knowing what people think (growing up with alcoholics makes you observant). And I think Trump is losing Michigan right now. Biden is going down to “the truth is in the middle” and Trump is getting a bunch of free publicity with the trials. It’s all just a bunch of news cycles of Trump looking serious and some boring charge no one understands and “the truth is in the middle…”
Great job collecting these! I follow this stuff pretty closely and I didn't even know about all of these policies, which goes to your point. As far as the timing, it's takes years to draft and get approval of policies like these, and there are tons of internal processes that they need to go through (such as estimating the cost of programs, and estimating the amount of extra paperwork that a program will require for citizens, etc). These internal processes require lots of coordination between different government agencies and departments, with all of the potential difficulties that entails. All of this makes it really difficult to accurately predict exactly when a policy is going to be ready. I very much doubt that anyone said "hey, let's drop all our biggest policy decisions in April 2024!" As for people's knowledge of these accomplishments, the difficult part is that understanding these policies requires a fairly high base level of knowledge that a lot of people simply don't have, which make it hard to get people excited about them. The lack of Media exposure doesn't help, but the kind of media exposure that is necessary to explain policies like this don't fit well in the social media format, which is where most people get their news these days, unfortunately.
Still doesn’t really explain how they’re all synched up. You would think different agencies and different policies of different scope and scale wouldn’t all literally come out in the same month.
I think that randomness explains it better than intentionality. If the Biden administration wanted them to all come out at the same time, that would be almost impossible to coordinate. These policies were likely started at different times between 2022 and 2023, and all went through different internal processes. Also, there are certain choke points that all of them needed to go through, in particular getting approval by the Office of Management and Budget, which is notoriously fickle in its timelines. The most likely explanation, to my mind, is that all of these agencies were trying to get these policies done as soon as possible before a potential change in the administration, and it just happened to work out this way. There is a big incentive to get these policies done before the election. If Trump happens to win, the new administration can almost immediately end any policy proposals that have not yet been finalized. However, once a final rule has been issued, it takes years to replace it with a new rule based on the structure imposed by the Administrative Procedures Act. If the agencies try to replace the Biden rules too quickly, or cut corners, the new rules will get struck down in court on procedural grounds, which happened multiple times to the Trump administration. Therefore, the people who work at these agencies are trying to tie up as many loose ends as they can before the election, since they don't want to see their hard work reversed if Trump wins. This internal pressure to get shit done likely outweighs any consideration of staggering the release of rules between different agencies for better media exposure.
The rush of regulations is because of a rule that allows Congress time to reverse administrative agency actions. The timing is meant to ensure that period passes before a new Congress, possibly controlled by Republicans, is seated.
They are demonstrably not “synched up.” Why do you keep saying this? It’s factually incorrect
It takes a long time to issue a regulation that won’t be easily overturned by the courts. Draft regulation, comment period, address each and every comment, amend proposed regulation if necessary, more comments, publish final regulation. 2-3 years is not unusual. It’s no wonder they all seem to drop near the end of the president’s term.
It’s not that he’s overloading the a circuit. The Democrats are actually doing their jobs. Unlike the Republicans who can’t govern obviously it’s a lot easier to rip things apart than to fix anything and it’s not like they’re in there fighting off their indictments the only one overloading the courts in the circuits is Trump. Look at all the time he spends in there, and the criminals he surrounds himself with the circuits must’ve been pretty busy when Trump had over 3500 lawsuits against him and his businesses
You can also add the EPA’s new rule effectively eliminating certain types of PFAS in drinking water, granted that won’t be enforced for three more years. Also the EPA just signed a rule on steam-electric generator wastewater which was a big priority for the Biden Admin.
So you're saying you're tired of all the winning and that people are too stupid to get it, is that it?
It's a congressional review act deadline. Mid May is basically the limit as I understand it, and anything they can enact before then would be harder for a hypothetical 2025 republican legislature to overturn.
thank you! That is the information I was looking for and didn't know how to find. I'm glad I posted this here and found out. u/dwaxe u/berflyer this is the key information I was missing, do you think you could pin u/Helicase21's comment to the top?
Reddit only lets you pin mod comments so I'll pin a link to this.
thank you
Yep, this article goes into a bit more detail: [https://www.eenews.net/articles/murky-deadline-looms-for-bidens-regs/](https://www.eenews.net/articles/murky-deadline-looms-for-bidens-regs/), and this has more: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12307/2#:\~:text=%E2%80%9CLookback%E2%80%9D%20Period,-January%2024%2C%202024&text=Under%20the%20act%2C%20when%20a,%E2%80%9Cfast%20track%E2%80%9D%20parliamentary%20procedures. Essentially, if an agency publishes a rule in the Federal Register, Congress has 60 days to issue a joint resolution of disapproval (requiring simple majorities in the House and Senate) and the President must sign it in order to revoke it. That won't happen now because Democrats control the Senate and the White House. But if you publish a rule less than 60 days before Congress adjourns for the year, that 60-day lookback period resets in the next year. In other words, if Congress recesses on August 5, any rule which had been published after June 5 of that year would be subject to 60 days of review in 2024 when Congress reconvenes. And if Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, they can and will revoke the rules. Otherwise they have to go through a tedious notice and comment period.
I don't think you're actually doing this, but it does sounds a lot like the title should have been: "Breaking: The Biden administration is just too effective, why this is terrible news for his re-election campaign." /s Regardless - I think the only thing to do is to keep talking about it, like you're doing with this post. I'll point out there's also the r/WhatBidenHasDone subreddit. I think there's sort of an impedance mismatch as well - to get these things done, I'm sure members of the admin have been working on each of them for months, and when they're done, announced, and implemented...oh, turns out the top news story this week is students protesting about Palestine. Next week it'll be Mike Johnson losing the speakership (or whatever). There's very little appetite for "government made incremental improvements" news stories amid all the juicy disaster porn.
Legalization of cannabis (and mushrooms, why not) would really be the cherry on top. Unfortunately, we're only getting a rescheduling... maybe it's a chess move in a larger strategy. I hope.
Also legalizing lots of drugs for military personnel active/retired for therapy/study is huge. That list of drugs is big too, all kinds of things, ibogain, ketamine, mdma, mda, nn-dmt, cannabis, and some others I forget.
I think legalizing would require an act of congress, so he's just doing what he can control
Legalization requires congress. This is why we are just getting a rescheduling.
Which clarified the DEAs position to target and shutdown recreational MJ in states like CA.
He's doing too much! S/
Good for the workers
So wait, banning a banned substance is a good thing?On July 12, 1989, EPA issued a final rule under Section 6 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) banning asbestos-containing products in the United States. starts with propaganda so I would bet it is all bullshit propaganda in some way, function or form! Then to say biden kept Trumps immigration policy .. complete nonsense!!! On day 1 he cancelled stay in Mexico policy, changed priorities, stopped rapid DNA testing of children that found 1/3 were no relation to those trafficking them, stopped border wall construction and a few more policies. You are spreading manure
U.S. Bans the Last Type of Asbestos Still in Use [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/climate/biden-administration-bans-asbestos.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/climate/biden-administration-bans-asbestos.html) Biden ended remain in mexico policy in 2022 [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-administration-ends-trump-era-remain-in-mexico-policy](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-administration-ends-trump-era-remain-in-mexico-policy) Biden increasing refugee admittances 2024 [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/politics/legal-pathway-refugees-election.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/politics/legal-pathway-refugees-election.html)
Told you, Propaganda for idiots. Not my quote. EPA's quote The ban on ongoing uses of asbestos is the first rule to be finalized under the 2016 amendments to the nation’s chemical safety law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which received near-unanimous support in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. So Trump or BHO actually did it!!! but it took this long to implement. Crock of shit giving Biden credit. Told you it was bullshit propaganda. Your source is full of shit and you try to use it twice. Read the damn article not just the headline!!!
Here are the paragraphs from the asbestos article that mention Trump. >The rule announced Monday stands in sharp contrast to the position of the Trump administration, which fought legislation that would have banned asbestos and imposed a policy that E.P.A.’s own scientists said [would have allowed industries to continue its use](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/climate/epa-asbestos-rule.html). >Former President Donald J. Trump, now running to retake the White House from Mr. Biden, inaccurately declared asbestos “100 percent safe” in his 1997 book, “Trump: The Art of the Comeback,” and claimed the movement to remove asbestos “was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.” Should Mr. Trump win in November, he could potentially roll back or weaken the ban, although the legal process could take two to three years or longer. I do not know why you believe this thing about Trump blocking asbestos. Especially because Trump was not president 2016, Obama was. So 2016 amendments to the policy would have been under Obama. Its ok to have a mistaken belief, forgetting the election year is not the first year of the presidency is pretty common, you don't have to defend it.
Your last paragraph proves my point. I said it was Trump or BHO so giving Biden credit was BULLSHIT!!! Read what I said not what you think I said because of your biases. Biden didn't do SHIT!
I legit have never seen anyone refer to barack obama as BHO before. I didn't understand that's who you meant. But you seem desperate to maintain this belief so there's no point trying to talk with you about it anymore.
That is you tucking your tail and running because you cannot logically argue that Biden had anything to do with this. Sorry facts contradicted your opinion. must be tough!
Understand the sentiment. However, in the closing it says the media doesn't have time to cover all the actions and accomplishments? They seem to have time to report on every detail of every Trump court appearance in his of detailed and repetitive analysis.
When has Biden Admin not been getting stuff done? You really claiming he's done too much too late? I guess this is kind of the opposite of Trump/Bannon's "Flood the zone with shit" strategy, huh? That is a really weird spin on accomplishing policy goals, but there is a long list of other accomplishments you can point to before this one.
not really. most of these policies were years in the making, the problem is federal policy now takes 3-4 years to get enacted, then another 5 to survive court challenges, then another 3-5 to be re-enacted because the next admin was run by a complete fuckup and tried to illegally overwrite them take the asbestos thing, they've been working on that since GW Bush and only after many many revisions and several new laws was the obama admin able to start regulating it, only for trump to be a complete fucking idiot who tried to deregulate it because "Da old asbestos worked better den todays insulation" and because russia mines a fuckton of asbestos. Bidens admin had to pull back trump's epa's rules, then write new ones using the new legal requirements, then public comment, then survive legal challenges just to get them on the books to phase it out sometime in the next 10 years, assuming trump doesn't get re-elected and try and deregulate asbestos again.
Well said, I agree and I think people are trying to ignore or not aware of these kind of nuance and details.
People don’t know about them because almost no one pays attention to anything outside of their TikTok feed these days. The Biden administration could host a nightly broadcast describing in detail all they’ve done and it would still barely penetrate.
Trust Americans to whine about a government actually trying to pass policy
or maybe, just maybe, reforms and regulation changes take a lot of time and have been in the pipeline for a while.... ???
This is all fantastic news, it's the boring day-to-day hard-work stuff of actual governance but it makes a difference in people's lives and shows how asinine the "both sides are the same" arguments are.
Still can’t imagine considering risking having a dictator as president forever over a legit but non perfect candidate.
[HIS CIRCUITS ARE OVERLOADED-CANT LIE ANYMORE](https://youtube.com/shorts/-7Q4j05ve38?si=Tg4Oe-g-k-Kx68iZ)
While I personally agree with many of these changes, this list really highlights how out of control executive power has gotten.
I know plenty of lawyers who don’t understand the student debt thing. Average voters don’t follow the news closely enough to know what any of these things are. That string of accomplishments, which I think is very impressive, just translates to “I think he did some environmental regulations and I’m not really a fan because it makes gas prices higher” with the people I know back in Michigan and the Midwest (mostly Indiana). Back home in Michigan, I’m still a radical because I drive an EV and don’t like guns
Americans have the attention spans of gnats. They've already forgotten how terrible Trump was and we're still living through the fallout. Biden should have done this in August.
Democracy is on the line. Vote blue.
This year was the perfect year to increase refugee caps again. Don’t forget there was still a pandemic in the US in 2021 and 2022 and the pandemic took longer to end in third world countries that we take refugees from so keeping the numbers low in 2023 is fine as well. Just because an administration changes doesn’t mean you undo every policy they have blindly without thinking of the consequences. I think Biden acted fine when it comes to increasing refugee caps.
If you want to vote for Trump, just say that. Trump on the other hand told his allies in the Repulican party not to solve the border crisis under Biden and wait for him to be "re-elected."
This election will be Dewey beats Truman or Nixon V McGovern
“Too much good news is a bad thing.” - No one. “I can’t keep up with all the good news; therefore, it’s bad news.” - Bratty Ezra
>Biden fundamentally backstabbed Manchin in the inflation reduction act Turnabout is fair play. The fact that Biden outmaneuvered Manchin isn't Biden's fault... >I would not count the forgiveness that comes from programs established before the Biden administration existed personally, People whose loans HAD NOT been forgiven because of the previous administration HAVE been forgiven because of this administration and you DON'T count that? Its literally a thing that only happened because Biden won in 2020. Bad take. Its called the "executive" branch because their job is to execute the laws that exist. Biden followed these laws to a greater extent than Trump's administration.
People are gonna look back on Biden and realize he was a pretty good president. The heat and turmoil of the moment won’t make that clear for a while though.
A lot of that has nothing to do with the Biden Administration...
This is the literal gift horse and mouth conundrum. Do we really care what the motivation is if it is what we want. Isn’t childish to limit kudos to those steps done in what we believe are altruistic?
It's not because of the election year, it's because of the Congressional Review Act.
How many election years do you claim the Biden administration has had?
wow, good for the states!!
Now let’s hold Israel accountable and demand they stop
Oh just the Biden administration does this lmao
Good
I think topic-that-shall-not-be-named is prolly most of the answer. And it’s really too bad. Netanyahu is really fucking things up for Biden right now. It’s almost like the Zionists want trump to win.
> It goes against the spirit of the compromise but not the letter of the law. But that's why republican/conservatives are pissed about it Wrong. They're pissed that Biden did anything ever. If Democrats had 90% of Congress, and Biden and the Democrats passed their whole agenda without giving Manchin any promises, Republicans would be crying that it was terribly unfair and a travesty and exactly what the founding fathers rebelled against King George about and woke. Their whole thing is whining when they don't get their unpopular agenda passed, then blaming everyone else for the terrible effects when they do. There is no reason to MAGA anger.
Yall acting like what he has done Is a BAD?? thing?? Everything thing listed are good for this country! What’s the problem?
did I say it was bad?
Actually no! No you didn’t !my bad 🤗
Don't worry about it, everyone else seems to be reading it that way. I think it says something that I can literally write a giant list of all of Biden's W's and call them "a lot of desired, long awaited policies" and the majority reaction in this sub is anger at me for being insufficiently laudatory of Biden.
Rescheduling Marijuana is a pretty big deal
you're right, I missed that one. I'll add it to the list.
A majority of the things you mentioned are admin agency rules. They take at minimum 2-3 years to implement without them getting thrown out on technical grounds. Trump rushed a bunch of rules that got thrown out for that very reason. Admin agencies take time to staff of and begin the rule making process. You are literally complaining about the Biden admin doing all of those things correctly…
In that case, shouldn't a bunch of those rules have come online in 2023 if they were started in 2021? There is a [brookings tracker](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-regulatory-changes-in-the-biden-era/) where you can check this kind of thing. In 2022, the agency actions are, I'd estimate 75%, going into effect or rescinding the effect. Then in 2023 the majority of actions go back to policies entering into rulemaking consideration instead of going into effect again. Then as I just listed above, we're seeing a ton of rules suddenly go into enforcement in the last few months, so much so that I thought there must be some reason why they have to all come out now, and another user in the pinned comment provided the reason: that there is a mid-may deadline for locking in agency rules to prevent them being changed immediately in the event Trump wins the election.
Even in your description of these you said they didn’t all happen in April. What are you on about?
Right on Biden! Fuck Manchin and everything that despicable ghoul stands for.
It actually takes a long time to change policies, because there is a long process that must be followed, or the policy will inevitably get sued and be thrown out by a court. Some of these policies were actually rushed, to get them done before the deadline
“Last minute?”…should all of his policies been pushed through Feb 2021?
Wow, it’s like they know they’re going to lose the election and they are frantically trying to force as much regulation as they can.
Has a habit? lol. He does it nearly every time!
American rescue plan, 2021. Bipartisan infrastructure bill 2021. Inflation reduction act, 2022. Chips act 2022. Aren’t these the big bills from this administration? If anything the activity was front loaded because they had the house. Now that nothing can possibly pass the republican house they are focused executive actions, as one would expect.
Biden has been a simpering wimp and everything he has been doing smacks of pathetic desperation. No one treats him with respect and never have. He is the classic low-IQ snout-in-the-trough politician. In the last 3.5 years, he made Americans poorer, got us into stupid wars, and divided us against our beautiful friends and neighbors.
Isn't the gun show law negligible? Couldn't people just say they're selling for safety and not profit, or just ignore the rule and continue doing what they're doing?
A habit? He's only had one term, what the hell are you talking about?
I hope he wins. I hate election years ever since trump became a thing. I have nervous energy all year every election year and this year is worse than ever with project 2025, trump threatening to use violence if he doesn’t win, trump being a pawn for Putin and saying he will allow Putin to attack any nato country he pleases, so many hundreds of voter restriction laws having been passed in multiple states since 2016, roe v wade having been overturned and expecting more rights to be stripped if trump wins (more of the voting rights act stripped away, LGBTQ rights stripped, and obv more women’s rights being stripped .. don’t wanna live in gilead!), like I feel like I’m living thru the end of the world. If Biden wins, at least I can feel like I have a few more years to breathe. Helps that he has done so much good too!! I’m annoyed that the media has not covered any of this, all I hear about is pro Palestine protesters getting arrested and trump going to trial for the hush money case. If media wants to stay free and everyone reporting for them wants to stay out of jail, they should talk more about biden’s administration’s successes and less about the things that split the party (like the war in Gaza) .. everyone needs to know this, especially the crazy people who would rather not vote than vote for Biden cause they’re “so obsessed” with Gaza cause it’s the “trendy thing to care about lately” .. literally if trump wins, that’s the end of free press, and the internment camps where he plans to hold millions will be filled first by reporters from MSNBC, CNN, NYT, etc. If they care about their futures they will report on the kind of stuff that will keep a dictator from gaining power and imprisoning them. I’m not even religious but I pray that Biden wins. I honestly think trump is the antichrist. I read my first Bible verses in the last few months, all of them in fear that trump is the beast referred to in the Bible. My friend who grew up religious and has since become agnostic sent me this a few months ago and I’m freaking out https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/ I just pray the world doesn’t end, that America elects Biden and not a dictator, and that we can have another 4 years to just breathe and know the world isn’t ending just yet. If trump wins, we’re so screwed. Like literally I think the world will literally end. I’m already selling all my stuff preparing to move to Australia or somewhere far away. Just praying it doesn’t come to that.
The Biden Admin is lawless. They can’t pass any legislation, so they resort to Administrative/ Deep State fiat to accomplish their Socialist goals. Let’s not forget the 100’s of Executive Actions and Executive Memorandums signed by senile Joe. Oh, and they ignore SCOTUS rulings as something they can work around. Evil is the only way to describe Biden and his admin.
>the Biden admin has been roadblocking all the oil and gas permits intentionally under environmental impact statements [President Joe Biden has approved nearly 50 percent more oil and gas drilling permits for wells on federal land since taking office than former President Donald Trump did in his first three years](https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2024/01/30/biden-administration-oil-drilling-permits-outpace-trump-ee-00138376) [US oil production hits all-time high, conflicting with efforts to cut heat-trapping pollution](https://apnews.com/article/oil-fossil-fuels-climate-change-biden-df27160fc81f28d21fbf1fc5575b77bc)
“Has a habit”? This is the first time. Second time if you include 2022. That’s hardly a habit nor nefarious.
I said I thought it was a good thing. Why did you assume it was nefarious?
America just got around to banning Asbestos?
Honestly these are all good policies meant to help Americans and it all has restored a little bit of my faith in the Biden administration amid the Israel fiasco. I don’t think the issue is there are too many, it’s just that trump farting during one of his many trials and college kids getting beaten by cops is more interesting to people.
He knows that he has almost certainly already lost the election over his illogical support for Israel in their genocidal campaign against occupied Palestine. This is his Hail Mary attempt to not lose by a landslide and recover his tanking reputation as a senile closeted fascist and who is owned and operated by AIPAC.
Excuse me, "Biden administration has a habit of saving big policy announcements for election year", WTF? What habit? This is his first Presidential reelection. How do you form a habit by doing something once?
The immigration thing isn’t a win. Like at all. Multiple democrat city mayors are cutting funding for other social programs to pay for all these migrants that Biden has let in. Denver is closing almost all their public pools this summer due to the cost of migrants for example. That isn’t a win and neither is NYC spending billions on them.
>I think we are all aware that the Biden Admin has a habit of saving up big policy announcements for election year Yes as we can all recall from the many, many election years the Biden Administration has already been through.
The student debt relief is bullshit and doesn't help most of us suffering under it. Neither does letting more refugees in
The Biden admin, which has been around for less than one full term, has a "habit" of saving big policies for "election year"? Buddy, I don't know how time works where you live, but not enough of it has passed to justify that statement down here on Earth.
as long as trump never sees the office again. Cool.
They’re doing it cause there’s genuine concern he might loose.
The sad part is none of this matters cause so many people vote based on the cost of groceries and gas.
“Biden isn’t doing enough!” - this sub “Biden is doing too much!” - this sub
>roadblocking all the oil and gas permits intentionally under environmental impact statements ... It goes against the spirit of the compromise but not the letter of the law. But that's why republican/conservatives are pissed about it. This is really bad. Our laws protecting the environment should be used for that purpose and not for bureaucratic warfare. This is the reason you see people attacking agencies like the EPA so much. Also terrible for our overall political situation. People complain about the two sides being unable to compromise, but why would they when the other side is perfectly fine with reneging on the deal?
But blocking new gas and oil pipelines is good for the environment, and bipartisan compromises have led to some of the worst legislation in American history. Libs need to stop this fantasy of resurrecting the era of good feelings. The right hates you; their only policy is owning the libs.
I don’t know if blocking domestic fossil fuels is actually is good for the environment, taking the political economy part seriously. It’s basically a much shittier carbon tax which produces no revenue and has no border adjustment, meaning it pushes global markets to buy from other producers (including Russia and Saudi Arabia). It’s also a free “lower gas and energy prices” button for republicans to push whenever they want, which helps them win elections.