Biden is about to repeat one of the biggest blunders of the Obama presidency

To stay popular, the president needs to think about how his financial plans for rebuilding America are really going down

A painting of Abraham Lincoln is seen as US President Joe Biden speaks on Covid-19 response in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC (AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration is on the verge of repeating one of the most profound blunders of the Obama presidency.  In order to sustain support, politicians need to make it very clear how their programs are going to benefit everyday Americans. And by lumping COVID relief into nameless billions instead of inaugurating essential new programs to eradicate the pandemic, the president is ignoring the ABCs of public policy.

Take a look at history. You cannot deny that FDR’s New Deal alphabet programs were purposefully designed to improve the livelihood of Americans. Whether you were an ally or an enemy of the administration’s approach to saving capitalism from itself, there was an unmistakable and understandable strategy.

Fast-forward to the Obama administration’s response to the financial emergency of 2008, and you’ll remember uninspired plans like “stimulus” — and more unpopularly “bailouts” — for financial systems that were on the precipice of collapse. All of which raises the question: When did we become so unimaginative in constructing public policy?

President Biden has reversed some of Trump's most poisonous executive actions, but these hardly answer the raging American pandemic and inequality. So it’s onward to the $1.9 trillion package — or the “American Rescue Plan”. It is the successor to the Obama-era forefather, American Recovery and Reinvestment, from which much good came despite the lack of public understanding. Requiring a filibuster-proof sixty-vote supermajority, the ARP is currently dead in the water.

But with the Democrats’ single-vote majority, they can use budget reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority, for comprehensive virus relief and other lawmaking. Here's where explicitly naming and prioritizing programs is critical. If Joseph Robinette Biden wants to become JRB — like a third-coming of LBJ or FDR — here’s what can awake a new dawn of American health and economic security.

First, and most desperately, we need a Vaccination Progress Administration to churn out vaccines in the millions. Through the authorization of the Defense Production Act, JRB can authorize pharmaceuticals to keep making them until we are all immunized. In every American township and city, we need open-air vaccination sites, stocked with not only vaccines but also medical-grade masks and sanitizer packs.

Then, an American Valley Authority and American Urban Authority for an unprecedented infrastructure commitment — to install high-speed broadband and electrical power in every ZIP code in the country, build new hospitals for virus-stricken country and city communities, and undertake the most ambitious “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” investment in American history. When the pandemic is over, it can be a brand new day in America.  

Then, there’s an Economic Security Act to fulfill the promise of a safety net for all hard-working Americans — not only senior citizens — that provides for stimulus payments to the jobless and all who’ve been financially displaced since or before the pandemic.

We need longstanding commitments to good paying jobs to rebuild the United States for the next decade — a plan to beat COVID and be ready for all future health challenges. As epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves of Yale School of Public Health pointed out about one of Biden’s proposals, an envisioned FEMACorps is limited to only 18 to 26-year-olds and lacks competitive compensation.    

The list goes on: A Climate Conservation Corps to decarbonize and protect American shores from drought, floods, and fires. Finally, we need a Democracy Works Administration for citizens to end Citizens United, gerrymandering, and the corporate domination of our politics. This is the logical sequence: vaccines; infrastructure and climate; democracy reform.

The new White House has emphasized, “We are currently facing four converging crises — COVID-19, the resulting economic crisis, climate change and racial inequity. [In his first] week President Biden took swift action to combat these challenges.”

Senator Chuck Schumer more accurately defined the stakes in his first national interview as Majority Leader. Vast economic and racial inequality in America are not the result of the pandemic. New programs should not only stabilize our country but durably invigorate it.

He can be Joe Biden. Or he can be JRB. The time to decide is now.

Alexander Heffner is host of The Open Mind on PBS