Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What to expect in Joe Biden’s first 100 days
What to expect in Joe Biden’s first 100 days
Jul 18, 2025 7:46 PM

Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, a president’s first 100 days have served as a benchmark for his presidency. Newly inaugurated President Joe Biden has already made history by signing an unprecedented number of executive orders on his first day and pledging a flurry of legislation which will greatly expand the size, scope, and cost of government while reversing protections for people of faith and the unborn.

Biden’s staff designed some of his initiatives to fit the 100-day time frame, such as:

Vaccinating 100 million Americans for COVID-19 – a rate of roughly a million a day, a goal that had already been realized before he took office. Although Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Xavier Becerradefended the goal as “bold” and “ambitious,” Biden admitted on Monday that he “misspoke” and hoped the level would rise to 1.5 million doses a day;Open all public schools within 100 days;Stop all deportations for 100 days, pending new guidance; andUnveiling a “100 Day Masking Challenge.” In a rare nod to the Constitution’s limits on federal power, Biden scaled back his proposed 100-day national mask mandate to federal property and interstate travel, as well as issuing the aforementioned, voluntary “100 day masking challenge.”

Other early Biden administration actions are purely symbolic. For example, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that the administration would “resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20” bill.

However, much of President Biden’s agenda for his first 100 days in office remains substantive.

Executive orders: Ron Klain, Biden’s ing chief of staff, previewed the president’s first 10 days in a January 16 memo. “On Inauguration Day, President-elect Biden will sign roughly a dozen actions bat the four crises” of “the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis, and a racial equity crisis.” That process is already well underway. In addition to the 17 executive actions on his first day, Biden has signed executive orders enhancing union organization by public sector unions and boosting federal pay to at least $15 an hour, assuring COVID-19 economic relief is distributed “in a manner that increases [racial] equity,” strengthening “Buy American” protocols, and allowing transgender people to serve in the military – and receive hormone therapy or gender-reassignment surgery at taxpayer expense, a policy that could cost taxpayers up to an estimated $3.7 billion over 10 years. The president plans to issue new executive orders on racial equity, climate change, healthcare, and immigration this week.

Biden has repeatedly said he will repeal former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ Title IX due process reforms. DeVos gave those accused of sexual harassment on campus such fundamental legal rights as the ability to review the evidence against them and have counsel cross-examine the accuser. Biden would roll these reforms back to a standard imposed by the Obama administration, which many likened to a kangaroo court. Biden will likely reinstate the Obama-era guidance on transgender students using the restrooms, locker rooms, and overnight modations of the opposite biological sex.

Klain said reliance upon executive branch edicts “represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the President.” The left-wing of his party places a heavy premium on executive actions that circumvent the legislative process. Corbin Trent, a former spokesperson for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has said “we just don’t have time” to convince center-left Democrats “like [Sen.] Joe Manchin that are going to be trying to pull back the party and hold us back.”

COVID-19 economic ‘stimulus’: Topping Biden’s legislative agenda is the “American Rescue Plan,” a new COVID-19 relief package that Biden promises will cost “in the trillions of dollars.” (Most sources place the actual price tag at a still-gargantuan $1.9 trillion.) Biden plans to raise the amount of stimulus checks every American will receive by supplementing the $600 checks already authorized by an additional $1,400 per person. The bill also proposes 14 weeks of paid family leave at up to $1,400 a week. Desmond Lachman of AEI wrote:

The Biden stimulus package is truly epic in size. It would be more than twice the size of the 2009 Obama budget stimulus and e on top of the more than US$3 trillion inCovid-19 budget stimulus measuresenacted last year. It would also ing at a time that the U.S. registered a record budget deficit last year, which raised our public debt to GDP ratio to over 100 percent. Thatratiowas higher than that which prevailed after theSecond World War.

The sticker shock will only rise, as socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders has said he is “working with Biden’s people, we’re working with Democratic leadership” to craft “the most aggressive reconciliation bill to address the suffering of the American working families today.” A Senate Democratic aide told Politico these negotiations will result in “a vote-a-rama” before the bill goes to President Biden’s desk. Then, the Senate plans to pass the bill by the process of reconciliation, which requires a bare majority in both houses, allowing the package to e law without a single Republican vote.

The government will distribute the spoils according to intersectionality and critical theory. “Our priority will be black, Latino, Asian, and Native American-owned small businesses, women-owned businesses,” Biden said.

Biden also plans to extend moratorium on student loan repayments and interest, as well as pausing foreclosures and evictions until September 30, 2021.

$15 minimum wage: Biden plans to raise the minimum wage to more than double the federal minimum wage, from $7.25 to $15 an hour. ““Nobody working 40 hours a week should be living below the poverty line,” Biden said. A $15 hourly minimum wage could cost 3.7 million Americans their jobs, denying them the right to work any hours, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Taxes and economic policy: Biden named reversing most of the reductions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts of 2017 as one of his top priorities. “I’d make the changes on the corporate taxes on day one,” he promised. Raising business taxes from 21% to 28% would give the U.S. a higher corporate tax rate than the European (20%) and global average (24%). The proposal would cost 236,000 U.S. jobs, lower wages by 1%, and contract the GDP by 1.2% ($236 billion), according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

Taken together, these measures would reduce economic activity, even as states begin to lift government-imposed lockdowns and unleashed nearly a year of pent-up demand. However, is working on ways to create an alternate economic reality. Biden’s “economic policy team has signaled that it will be the first administration ever to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios,” Axios reported. Biden has missioned measures of to fuel this alternate economic narrative, signing an executive order that tasks federal bureaucrats with gauging the “social cost” of carbon, nitrous oxide, and methane.

Environment: Biden has already canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and announced plans to ban hydraulic fracking and coal mining on public lands, a move that puts him at odds with labor unions and portions of the industrialized Midwest that proved pivotal to his victory. His executive order threaded the needle, saying that Biden aims “to prioritize both environmental justice and the creation of the well-paying union jobs.”

Illegal immigration: “On day one I’m sending … to the United States Congress a bill to provide for a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people,” Biden told MSNBC last May – a priority reiterated by Klain’s memo. On his first day in office, January 20, Biden sent Congress the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. The legisltaion would allow qualified members of the U.S. illegal immigrant population (which Yale University researchers place at 16 to 29 million) to apply for a green card after five years and to obtain U.S. citizenship eight years. It increases diversity visas from 55,000 to 80,000; confers the same immigration status on those in same-sex unions as those in traditional marriages; issues more green cards for those in low-wage industries; and sends $4 billion in foreign aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to fight the “underlying causes” of illegal immigration.

Biden has extended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). He promised to create a mission to reunite children separated from their parents at the border. “With its self-proclaimed “first order of business,” this administration will be the first and only administration in U.S. history to announce that its top priority is not for U.S. citizens, but for non-U.S. citizens,” wrote Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation.

Abortion: Abortion has figured prominently in presidents’ first acts in office. This typically involves extending – or, in Biden’s case, repealing – the Mexico City Policy, which bans U.S. taxpayer funds from going to organizations that perform or promote abortion overseas. Biden is also slated to repeal the Protect Life Rule finalized in 2019, which bars any organization federal Title X funding if it plans to “perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion as a method of family planning.”

International organizations and agreements: Biden has already rejoined the World Health Organization in a bid to “restore our leadership on the world stage,” although he neither secured nor demanded any reforms from the organization. Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to “immediately reach out to Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and ask him to continue his incredible service to our country,” extending the tyranny of COVID-19 experts. He had the U.S. e a signatory to the Paris Agreement, a treaty never ratified by the Senate. And he has signaled his desire to revive the Iran deal.

These actions represent merely a preview of Biden’s agenda for his first three-and-a-half months in office. As his first day in office proved, Biden’s team is more adept, savvy, and aggressive in promoting its vision than its predecessors.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
On Call with Dr. Pamela Casson
Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...
Rev. Sirico on Life, Work, and Human Flourishing
J.Q. Tomanek of Ignitum Today interviewed Rev. Sirico about life, work, human flourishing, and his new book, Defending the Free Market: JQ Tomanek: Back in the day, holiness was misinterpreted as a cleric or religious life thing. How can a lay Catholic practice their faith? What are some ways to sanctify our work as lay Catholics? Is “ora et labora” just a monk thing? Reverend Sirico: Yes, religious people are often tempted to e so “heavenly minded they are no...
Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties
You cannot apologize to a fanatic, says Lee Harris. It only serves to convince him that he was right all along: The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy apologizing for our liberties—in particular, for what many would regard as the foundation of all our other liberties, namely, the freedom to express our minds as we see fit. This signature freedom, of which Americans...
How were people On Call in Culture 165 years ago?
What is so special about 1837? That was the year Abraham Kuyper was born. September 29th is his 165th birthday. So we thought we would go back to 1837 and see how people were being On Call in Culture back then. We don’t know if they were all believers on a mission to bless the world, but by seeing what was going on 165 years ago, we hope you are encouraged to engage your world in 2012! How did people...
Want to Help the Poor? Promote a Free Market in Health Care
Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. That’s the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple recently talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Aren’t there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There...
Is it really ‘aid’ if it goes to relatively wealthy nations?
Alan Duncan, an aid minister in the UK, says his government is “forced” to hand over large amounts of money to the EU’s foreign aid budget, but has no say in how the money is spent. The problem is that much of the $2 billion+ “aid” money (one-sixth of the British budget) goes to projects such as making a Moroccan water park more eco-friendly, an art project in St. Petersburg, and building a hotel and plex in Barbados. Britain’s International...
Counting the Profit of a Third Party Choice
Joe Carter recently highlighted the discussion at Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, about the value of (not) voting, particularly the suggestion by Andrew Haines that in some cases there is a moral duty not to vote. This morning I respond with an analysis of the consequences of not voting, ultimately arguing that one must not neglect to count the cost of abstaining to vote for any particular office. One issue, however, that I...
Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray
Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Can a culture of life and the noise and tumult of the marketplace co-exist? Rev. Robert Sirico, reflecting on this, says they can, so long as it is not a place where: [C]apitalism…places the human person at the mercy of blind economic forces…What we propose,...
Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document: Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by e Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”) Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s...
Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat
At least es at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Dodd-Frank became law in...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved