President-elect Joe Biden will be encountering an uphill battle as soon as he takes office. Starting from addressing the pandemic to handling a divided government, Biden has to face a list of problems to convince the Americans that “America is back.”
Let us take a look at the impending challenges that Joe Biden will face.
Handling the rising coronavirus case
As soon as he takes office on January 20, Joe Biden pledged to assemble a coronavirus taskforce. This promise was later supported by Pfizer’s announcement that the upcoming vaccine can have 90% efficacy. Other than the vaccine, Biden is also preparing to do a second nationwide lockdown.
Biden will face economic distress and an escalation of a deadly pandemic. He'll be further hampered by a divided government, a hostile judiciary, a weakened federal bureaucracy, and lingering Trumpian populism among the public. Eric Posner @ProSyn https://t.co/jzhscwfwil
— Josef Braml (@Josef_Braml) November 13, 2020
This is a crucial step to make and a challenge that had to be addressed immediately as the coronavirus cases are rising by hundreds of thousands every day. Other than being a health crisis, the pandemic also posed a significant threat to the U.S. economy.
According to most economists, Biden will have a hard time rebuilding the economy until the virus is contained.
Curb the economic damage
In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 44 million Americans were temporarily laid off.
As the lockdown lasted from weeks to months, it sparked a wave of bankruptcies, and as a result, a quarter of the employees laid off permanently lost their jobs.
Biden’s plan to implement a second nationwide lockdown could also induce a fresh wave of layoffs, and this is an issue that the administration should carefully take into consideration.
The pandemic already caused damaging effects to significant sectors of the economy, such as aviation, tourism, and hospitality. If the second wave of lockdown will be in effect, these sectors will remain in deep trouble and will likely be added to businesses that declared bankruptcy.
Joe Biden’s Emergency Action Plan to Save the Economy, which supposedly meant to promote work-sharing and prevent layoffs, also called for stimulus payments in an amount equivalent to what was distributed earlier this year.
Although all these plans and pledges sound promising, Joe Biden will encounter difficulties ensuring that financial aid arrives on time.
Implementing Build Back Better Blueprint
Another idealistic plan that Biden wants to implement is the Build Back Better Blueprint, which could cost around $7 Trillion.
This amount is set to be spent on building infrastructures and projects that are said to tackle climate change, affordable housing, and boost education.
On top of this, the Biden administration is also proposing to spend a $2 Trillion budget to slow down global warming and make buildings, public transportation, vehicles, and power plants less reliant on fossil fuels.
Joe Biden laid out these comprehensive and ambitious plans on many fronts.
He vowed to beat the pandemic and promised to restore the U.S. economy and its leadership role in the world.
Biden pledged to tackle all these areas in his first 100 days in office. He also plans to reverse a massive number of executive orders that were previously signed by President Trump.
Facing a divided government
.@continetti says Joe Biden will likely face pressure from the left as he struggles to get things done in a divided government. @SpecialReport https://t.co/PVEKkGeqOF pic.twitter.com/ElQB3guNgu
— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) November 12, 2020
Although executive orders can be repealed without a Senate majority, any action that requires Congressional approval will be close to impossible for him to pass.
Under Biden’s administration, the country will be placed in a divided control of the White House and the Congress, and this will be the worst-case scenario. It could result in paralysis in fiscal policy. A divided government could lead to a lopsided financial crisis, which will intensify its economic instability.
