While Republican front-runner Donald Trump is said to be nearing a possible indictment for his role in the 1/6 terrorist attack President Joe Biden is quietly doing actual work trying to help people.
Here is a short list of four Biden agenda items from today:
-additional actions to protect communities + workers from extreme heat
–Biden Cancer Moonshot announced the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health
-a series of new, concrete actions to increase housing affordability and protect renters
-bilat with Italian Prime minister Giorgia Meloni
You might not have heard about any of these items because they aren’t sexy and they don’t generate attention. What they do, though, is very important. They actually help to improve the lives of The People, and that is a large part of the job of a president.
Or rather, it’s supposed to be. During the Trump years, the President’s schedule was not full. It was often unclear what Trump was doing all day other than lunching with Pence and having a briefing read to him. We often didn’t receive readouts of calls with foreign leaders. It’s hard to say what Trump did all day, but it’s more than fair to say whatever it was, it wasn’t centered on using the power of the presidency to help every day people.
I’ll touch briefly on each item on President Biden’s list — although even this leaves out the announcement of Biden’s intent to nominate two people to federal circuit courts and two people to federal district courts, the joint statement from the Trilateral Fentanyl Committee and Biden’s statement on the second quarter GDP showing the economy grew at a 2.4% annual rate while inflation fell significantly, something economists have at least partly attributed to Biden policies. I mean, this man is busy. Oh, and tonight he’s delivering remarks at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium at the National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
Here’s what not-so “Sleepy Joe” is up to today:
President Biden asked the Department of Labor to issue a Hazard Alert and ramp up enforcement protecting workers from extreme heat, which the administration notes disproportionately impacts firefighters, farmers and farm workers, and construction workers. The alert will remind employers and employees that workers have heat-related protections under federal law and provide information on what employers should be doing to protect workers.
There are additional steps included, like $7 million from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to NOAA in order to improve national weather forecasts and $152 million from Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand water storage in California, Colorado, and Washington.
If protecting workers and communities from extreme heat sounds boring, maybe that’s why it’s not getting attention. But if you’re a worker suffering in this record heat, you might be grateful to have a president who actually thinks about you. I get the feeling that this sort of pro-blue collar worker push would be covered as part of Trump’s political ownership of working America, but when Biden does it (again), it’s widely ignored. We heard more about Trump’s promise that this was Infrastructure Week than we have about the actual impacts of the actual historic Infrastructure law Biden passed.
This stuff might seem weedy, but having it more widely known is critical to protecting democracy.
The Biden Cancer Moonshot is part of Biden’s “Unity Agenda.” In a statement sent to PoliticusUSA, the President wrote, “Today, we’re marking a major milestone in the fight to end cancer as we know it… Now, through ARPA-H, we will fund promising new approaches to removing cancer surgically.”
Their goal is “turning more cancers from death sentences to treatable diseases and – in time – cutting the cancer death rate in half.”
While Trump faces yet another indictment for yet more actions he took that directly harmed this country, Biden is over here trying to help American families. “Cancer has touched nearly every family in America, including ours. That’s why Jill and I believe so deeply in the Cancer Moonshot, which will be transformational for people across the country and around the world.”
The Biden administration announced additional protections for renters, noting in a fact sheet sent to us that the national “rental market is defined by a patchwork of state and local laws and legal processes that leave far too many renters with little recourse when housing providers fail to comply with the law or the lease agreement.”
These issues have only gotten worse due to the housing affordability crisis and systemic inequities in rental housing. Today’s actions are:
Ensuring all renters have an opportunity to address incorrect tenant screening reports;
Providing new funding to support tenant organizing efforts; and
Ensuring that renters are given fair notice in advance of eviction.
They also addressed housing actions:
Reducing barriers to build housing like restrictive and costly land use and zoning rules;
Expanding financing for affordable, energy efficient and resilient housing; and
Promoting commercial-to-residential conversion opportunities, particularly for affordable and zero emissions housing.
Now it’s true that announcing actions does not always automatically translate to on the ground actions. Also, the Executive Branch doesn’t pass legislation. But Biden is using the power he has over federal agencies to direct how those agencies carry out their duties and to give instruction about this administration’s priorities. He is using the power of the presidency to center every day people instead of Wall Street. It matters.
Then at 3 PM, President Biden has a bilateral meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to discuss the Euro-Atlantic alliance in terms of the war in Ukraine and its global repercussions, North Africa, and China.
President Joe Biden is not perfect. I don’t believe there are any Democrats who claim he is, certainly not the President himself. But what he brings to the presidency is extraordinary and is evident in the transformational laws he ushered through deeply divided legislative chambers.
Joe Biden not only brings exceptional knowledge about how to get things done from decades of work as a Senator and then as Vice President for eight years, but he also brings a personal sense of decency starkly lacking from the prior administration.
Yesterday, Biden called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) after McConnell’s alarming health incident during a press conference. Mitch McConnell has been the face of the President’s opposition all the way back to the Obama years, when he blocked the hearing for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee for nearly a year.
This is who Biden called to wish well. And as much as I disagree with McConnell politically, this is what I want a president to be: Someone bigger than most people. Someone more generous. Someone kids can look up to. Someone aspirational in character and deed. Someone who can deftly manage domestic and international issues because they have a deep, nuanced understanding of them and also know what they don’t know. Someone our allies respect. Someone who stands up for global democracy. Someone who cares about people.
That imperfect man, the man who is regularly criticized for his struggles with a stutter and who fumbles his words, shows up every day to work and does the job with vigor and dedication to what is right.
All we hear about is Hunter Biden’s laptop and the nude photos over which Republicans are so creepily obsessed (it’s past time for Hunter Biden to get a restraining order against Rep. Greene and others) and then we get Trump highlights of being criminally indicted for various crimes and being found guilty of rape in a civil trial.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate a working president, who is not self-dealing and using the White House as a Get Rich Quick scheme. A person who might not be representative of many of us, but who actually does listen when called out for not getting something. The best antidote to encroaching fascism is a democracy that is functional and working for the people.
But that only works if The People know about it. Rise up and spread the word. There’s a lot of something good happening in this White House.
