The NPR Politics Podcast - Joe Biden's Domestic Policy Legacy

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

In his four years in office, President Biden managed to get significant legislation passed, but also faced strong headwinds from both his own party and Republican opposition. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.The podcast is produced by Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Sarah McKammon Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McKammon. I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. Today we are looking back at Joe Biden's domestic policy record during his term as

president. He is leaving the presidency at a time when many Americans are unhappy with the direction of the country, but Biden had some big legislative wins, even though it wasn't always smooth sailing. Tam, the first major piece of legislation that Biden signed as president dealt with the ongoing COVID pandemic. This was of course back in 2021 when we were still very much in the thick of the pandemic when he took office. It was called the American Rescue Plan Act and it was an economic stimulus package for individuals and businesses, but it was very divisive. Tim, remind us why. Well it was a big spending package and

Republicans united against it and so right out of the box President Biden and Democrats were going it alone on this. Republicans argued that the federal government had already spent a lot of money on COVID, trillions of dollars was already out the door and more wasn't needed. There was also a concern that this American rescue plan could create inflationary pressure. Many people do believe that this is why there was this inflation that obviously continued to haunt President Biden and his legacy and the ability of Democrats to win in 2024. Or at least one reason for it, right?

Yeah. I mean, this is one thing that gets blamed a lot. I mean, President-elect Trump recently said he won in part because of groceries. Well, that was grocery prices. The Biden team would say, look around the world, there was inflation everywhere. What this bill actually did, the American Rescue Plan Act, it sent stimulus checks to the American people. It also sent a lot of money to state and local governments, some of which ultimately got spent on projects that didn't have anything to do with COVID. And it also included tax breaks for families and other programs that pulled a lot of American children out of poverty.

Now Asma, one of Biden's signature efforts was this investment in American infrastructure, but Biden helped push this package through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. Remind us what that did. Yeah, it was more than a trillion dollars to invest in American infrastructure. And so you can think of bridges, airports, roads, highways. I mean, all the things that Americans have complained about the quality for many, many

years. And I would say, you know, this predates even President Trump. A whole bunch of presidents have sought but haven't been able to necessarily have these major investments in infrastructure. The Biden White House describes this as being the largest investment in our nation's infrastructure in a generation.

One of the challenges though, I will say, and I'm sure we'll get to this with some of the other big pieces of legislation that President Biden signed, is that it takes many, many years for some of these things to actually come to fruition. And also, a lot of voters didn't know that this was happening and they didn't necessarily attribute it to President Biden.

One thing I will note about this piece of legislation that was different from the Recovery Act is this was bipartisan. This was passed with Republicans and Democrats alike. Now, not as many Republicans as Democrats, but the funny thing about it is that pretty much everyone is now willing to stand out there with a golden shovel and say, look at this amazing investment that I brought to my district. You know, when it comes to the economy, we talked a moment ago about some of the challenges

that the country has faced and the way that that has shaped the way voters look at the Biden administration. A lot of people, economists and lawmakers, thought the government could not pull off a so-called soft landing after the pandemic when it comes to the economy. But under Biden's watch, it must be noted, unemployment fell, jobs were created. The economy by many measures did quite well, despite the fact that many people are still feeling the impact of higher prices. How much of that economic growth can we say was attributable to Biden's legislative actions?

KS You know, when you talk about a soft landing, this White House will say that it took all sorts of steps to ensure that a soft landing was possible. Look, at the end of the day, I will also say the Federal Reserve, which no president controls, also holds a lot of the strings in terms of regulating the economy and inflation. And so, yes, it is true that over 16 million jobs were created during Biden's presidency. And yes, it is true that the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in the last 50 years has been here under the Biden presidency. But I think the counter to all of that is that people feel unemployment rates if they themselves are out of a job or if their parents or their spouses.

Everybody feels inflation. And so no matter what other really strong economic data there is, the challenge was is that inflation during the Biden presidency was at levels that hadn't been seen in decades. And that's what many people were frustrated and have been frustrated by. And we should note that the inflation rate has come down in the Federal Reserve has been gradually raising interest rates and has now slowed that. The economy is doing well. Inflation has slowed. The thing is though, it's not like the price of things has come down dramatically.

It's just that the price has stopped increasing. And so in this election year, when they were making decisions about how they felt about the economy, every time they went to the grocery store, it was like, oh my gosh, wow. Eggs used to be half that price. So something that Biden ran on in 2020 was this slogan, build back better. store, it was like, oh my gosh, wow, eggs used to be half that price.

So something that Biden ran on in 2020 was this slogan, build back better. And he tried to get that massive social program through Congress. He didn't. Osmo, what happened there? So build back better was what the administration would describe as kind of like human capital investments, right? These are investments in childcare, elder care. These are some of the planks that you actually saw Vice President Harris run on during her presidential campaign. They were massive investments. Ultimately, they

did not have the votes Democrats and frankly, they did not even have the entire support of their Democratic coalition in Congress. But the reality is that Biden never really gave up. Democrats and his allies never stopped pushing. And ultimately, they got sort of a scaled back version of it. The original build back better was like everything Democrats had ever hoped for and the kitchen sink. Okay. And what did pass the inflation reduction act was a bit of a misnomer. We talked about the challenges for the Biden administration with messaging around inflation. But Tam, what did that piece of legislation do? Act was a bit of a misnomer. We talked about the challenges for the Biden administration with messaging around inflation. But, Tam, what did that piece of legislation do?

I guess it depends on your definition of inflation. But this was really an environmental and health-related investment. It was a lot of money for clean energy, solar panels, batteries, the largest investment in fact in clean energy and reducing America's carbon footprint ever. And then it also included things like capping the price of prescription drugs out of pocket costs for seniors, which will take effect in 2025. Seniors will no longer have to pay as much out of pocket for prescription drugs. It also allowed for the first time Medicare, the US government,

to negotiate prescription drug prices. They're starting with, I think, 10 drugs and more will be added over time. The negotiations are complete, but the people aren't seeing those lower prices yet. But that is something that Democrats and Republicans alike have talked about for a long time, of wanting to have Medicare negotiate, since it's the biggest purchaser of medications in the country. And they did it with the Inflation Reduction Act. Okay, it's time for a quick break. And we'll be back in just a moment. the Inflation Reduction Act. Okay, it's time for a quick break, and we'll be back in just a moment. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

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More at kresge.org. And we're back. So another major achievement for President Biden was the Chips and Science Act. This helped promote semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. It was a massive investment in different parts of the country to try to make U.S. industries less reliant on China and other countries for these critical computer chips. Asma, how big of a deal was this? You know, I would say this is a big deal, much like the infrastructure bill that we

mentioned at the top of this show. This was bipartisan. It had support from Republicans, particularly those who see this not just as economic policy, but see it as national security policy. Chips, semiconductors, some of these most sophisticated ones are used in national security weapons, national security mechanisms. And so they believe that it needs to be made here in the U.S. for ways and reasons of keeping the United States more protected. They particularly don't want to be reliant, as you mentioned, on China for these. And so I would say you're already seeing some investments from major semiconductor companies. Some of these are happening in

Republican-controlled districts, some red states. You know, there was talk briefly on the campaign about, well, was this the best way to do it? Some Republicans would say, should we do other things? But at this point, I think there is so much sort of bipartisan support for the fact that the US needs to become more self-sufficient when it comes to making these sophisticated chips. We'll see how much of this all sticks around. I'm sure we're going to talk a bit about that. But at this point, it was it was

big and I would say it's not like something we've seen in recent years. Hmm. Okay. I want to talk about something else that President Biden tried to do. This was also a bipartisan effort. He tried to get a border deal through Congress. But by the point that that bill was moving forward, the issue was already a huge one in the 2024 election. Trump famously opposed this bill and it died. How will this issue, the border, shape Biden's legacy? Well, go back to what Trump said. He won on groceries and he won on the border. Those were two huge issues in this election. And there was this incredible backlash among Democrats to Trump policies during his first administration, which were seen as inhumane on immigration. So Biden

came into office and was like, we're not going to be like that. And they rolled back many of these policies. And then there was a problem at the border there. A lot of people coming in, a lot of people intercepted by the border patrol. It became a huge political liability almost immediately for Biden and Harris and one that persisted. Finally, there was this border security bill that was negotiated in the Senate and was bipartisan and then Trump said, no way, and it died. Biden then did a bunch of executive actions that actually dramatically slowed border crossings. But then the question was, well, why didn't you do that sooner? Biden also had a slew of other accomplishments in his four years of bipartisan gun safety bill, for instance. But one thing I'm curious about, you know, he got these things done with narrow

legislative majorities during the first part of his term. Now, when Trump comes into office, Republicans will have control of not only the White House, but also Congress. And they campaigned against a lot of Biden's policies. So how likely is it that some of these things will be repealed or weakened in Trump's second term? Well, I'll say the two major pieces of legislation that I've got my eye on are the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act. And the reason is because Trump has campaigned to gut portions of both of those bills. You know, the Inflation Reduction Act is something that he campaigned against. You've also heard House Speaker Mike Johnson talk about

rescinding elements of the law. One thing I will point out though is that you saw a few months ago a group of House Republicans write a letter saying basically that there are already investments that have broken ground, right? These are Republicans who are benefiting in some cases from this legislation. They're worried that prematurely repealing some of these energy tax credits could undermine investments. To me, that letter was a big warning sign of like, oh, if you've got really tight margins, can you actually upset parts of your own party and do this? And then the other piece is that Chips and Science Act. And that's because Trump himself during the campaign said that he would have gone

with tariffs instead to boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing rather than have this huge government investment that we see in legislation. I think that's going to be hard to roll back because it had solid bipartisan support. Again when he made those comments it seems like there was some Republican congressional pressure to say, ooh, no, we actually don't want to rescind that law. But those are the two major things I'm looking at. Not to say that they're going to be, you know, whole scale repealed,

but are you able to claw back some of the funding? And look, the Biden White House is aware that some of this stuff is at risk. They are trying to get as much of this money out the door as quickly as they can. The one thing I will note here is that when we talk about President Biden's legislative accomplishments, literally everything we've talked about in this podcast happened in 2021 and 2022, the first two years of his administration. And then Democrats lost the House in 2022. And essentially, big, ambitious legislation came to a screeching halt. And the only thing that they were basically able to do between the White House and Congress was fund the government. Just the most basic

thing to do is all they were able to accomplish. I think that that is a warning to President Trump or any president. You don't have a lot of time. You are never more powerful and productive than you are right when you take office. I think that we are seeing the incoming Trump administration acutely aware of this. They intend to race to get things done using some of the very same tactics that Biden and Democrats used to push legislation through. So what does this mean for Biden's legacy if some of his signature accomplishments are scaled back or killed entirely? And I guess a related question, what does it mean for

some of the people who have benefited from some of these policies? I mean, one of the really interesting things about covering economic policy and manufacturing investments, I would say, is that both under Trump and Biden, there was sort of a weird level of continuity, right? I mean, Biden kept in place much of all these tariffs that were put on China. You've seen massive investments in manufacturing and the sort of idea of investing in American manufacturing is a vision shared by both of these presidents. Look, I'll be the first to say they disagree on a lot, but this is one strange area of agreement. And so the big question for this new Trump administration is, well, do you want to spend your political

capital on really killing some politically popular bits of legislation, or do you want to enact your own policies? And so that's something I think we're going to be watching for. I mean, the big thing about much of this legislation we've talked about, infrastructure, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS, these are massive, massive government investments, investments that I would say most economists tell me you have not seen in the United States in decades. The challenge though for President Biden and Democrats is that these things will take also decades to come to fruition and to be felt by people.

And so I would argue that you won't really know the efficacy of Biden's legacy for decades still to come. And Biden's a rather elderly man. I mean, he may not even be around to see whether or not and how his own legacy is perceived by the American public. And we're gonna leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith, I also cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.