Reflecting on the first 6% of Biden’s (First?) Term (aka “100 days”)
Newsletter 79: Where to from here?
Nearly 100 days have passed since Biden took office. There’s no doubt that his administration has accomplished a lot in its first months. Already it has helped deliver a massive stimulus package, overseen a lightning fast vaccination program, reversed several key Trump policies, and introduced a bold infrastructure package. But the scale of the problems it inherited was and remains enormous. As the first major landmark of his presidency approaches, how has Biden done at tackling it all? Where does he go from here?
We’ve organized a fantastic panel to discuss those important questions. Tune in next Wednesday, April 28 at 5pm ET to hear the American Prospect’s David Dayen moderate a conversation between Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project, Jennifer Epps-Addison of the Center for Popular Democracy, and Solana Rice of Liberation in a Generation. RSVP here.
Transition:
As of this Monday, the vaccine is officially open to all American adults. The effort to get it in the rest of the world’s arms, however, continues to drag on. Last week, we were given some reason for optimism when, at a closed door WTO meeting, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai reportedly stated that pharmaceutical companies will need to “make ‘sacrifices’ to ensure that people in developing countries have access to Covid-19 vaccines.”
Unfortunately, Tai, who has already shown herself willing to tackle BigPharma’s stranglehold on trade agreements in the past, is not the only official whose opinion will matter here. As we detailed last week, officials within the Commerce Department, including Secretary Gina Raimondo and the acting Directors of the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will no doubt also be weighing in. So too will any number of White House advisors, many of whom hold investments in the pharmaceutical industry generally and the vaccine manufacturers specifically. And, as our Fatou Ndiaye and Zena Wolf detailed last week, one of Biden’s closest advisors -- Steve Ricchetti -- is both a former pharmaceutical lobbyist and brother to current BigPharma lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti. (Note that, despite our calls, we still have received no information about what, if any, steps Steve Ricchetti is taking to insulate himself from the influence of his brother’s clients.)
With so much money at stake, vaccine manufacturers will undoubtedly seek to exploit every possible channel to tip the outcome in their favor. But those who believe that pharmaceutical industry profits should not stand in the way of universal vaccination are keeping a close eye and the pressure on. This week, we, alongside 15 other groups, appealed directly to Secretary Gina Raimondo and COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients to publicly support waivers for vaccine IP protections and “to use existing tools under domestic U.S. law to minimize the power of intellectual property monopolies over vaccine production.” As if the case for open-sourcing the vaccines on moral and public health grounds wasn’t clear enough, new polling from Data for Progress makes clear that it’s a politically popular move as well. It’s time that the Biden administration demonstrate the same urgency getting the world vaccinated as it has shown in its vaccination effort here at home.
Climate Finance
It’s Earth week and Biden is reportedly marking the occasion with a major new executive order designed to tackle climate risk in the financial system. The order, a draft copy of which Politico obtained last week, includes a lot worth celebrating. Some of the directives, like a plank calling on the Financial Stability Oversight Council to assess climate-related risks to the financial system, are familiar and underway. Others, like a provision that would make federal suppliers subject to emissions and climate risk disclosure, are new. Overall, the order is an encouraging sign that the Biden administration is looking to implement the sort of all-of-government approach to fighting the climate crisis that we so desperately need.
The key, of course, to ensuring that these are more than just good ideas on paper will be in the details of the implementation. The order, for example, reportedly asks the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) to “evaluate the risk of continued investment in fossil fuel securities.” At present, however, the board’s four sitting members are all serving expired terms. This gives Biden an opportunity to nominate a full slate of officials who recognize the financial risks of climate change to fill its five seats, greatly increasing the chances that this proposal becomes a reality. Will he move quickly to do so?
Thirteen weeks after Secretary Janet Yellen promised to appoint a “very senior-level” to lead a “climate hub” within the Treasury Department, the department finally announced that it had filled the critical role. The choice, John Morton, is a disappointing one. Morton is a serial revolver who has bounced back and forth between government and the financial industry for years. He reportedly sees the push for a more sustainable economy as a competition that will have “winners” and “losers,” a framework that, if pursued to its logical end, will make us all “losers” to climate disaster.
Most recently, Morton has been putting his efforts towards pricing and guiding investments in “natural capital,” (i.e. water, soil, and air) to “protect” the environment. This approach, evocative of Cass Sunstein’s beloved (and largely disgraced) cost benefit analysis, inherently privileges people with financial resources. The divergent implications for caring more about “valuable” water and air than, say, “dirt cheap” soil is, well, clear. Valuations reflect relevance to the wealthy, whereas the burdens of the climate crisis are set to weigh most heavily on the poor. To set this right and mitigate pain, we’re going to need to prioritize the people with the least ability to influence market valuations. And, honestly, democratic governments are going to have to dictate terms to the financial sector, rather than vice versa.
Given his record and employment history, it’s hard to believe that Morton will be willing to challenge the financial industry’s power as needed. He has a lot to do to prove that, as our Dorothy Slater wrote soon after the announcement, he “comprehend[s] that a market-driven response to climate change dooms us to a non-response.”
Governance
The past several weeks have seen police violence in the national conversation once again. This time, unlike last summer, Biden can offer more than words. The federal government cannot single handedly fix this problem but it can help in key ways. To name just one example, U.S. Attorneys could intervene more frequently in cases of police misconduct, providing a backstop to state and local systems that too often fail to deliver accountability. So far, however, Biden has nominated no U.S. Attorneys, leaving these important offices in the hands of acting officials, many of whom were hand-picked by Trump’s U.S. Attorneys. For the blog last week, our Mariama Eversley described one such official, Anders Folk, the acting U.S. Attorney for the state of Minnesota. If Biden is serious about tackling police misconduct and otherwise precipitating a shift in criminal justice policy, he will move quickly to nominate permanent and genuinely progressive leaders for these offices. And, in the meantime, Biden and Garland must ensure that officials who actually share the Biden administration’s commitments lead them in an acting capacity.
Elsewhere at the Department of Justice, acting officials and permanent leadership alike appear increasingly and shockingly out of step with the agenda Biden laid out while on the campaign trail. Many took notice Monday when Biden’s Solicitor General adopted the Trump administration’s position and argued for a narrow reading of immigration law that will bar tens of thousands of recipients of Temporary Protected Status from applying for green cards. As we demonstrate in a new blog, however, this is the latest, horrifying example of a clear trend. Biden’s Justice Department has taken up Trump’s side in numerous cases over the last several months both before and after Attorney General Merrick Garland was confirmed. In others, it has delayed rather than dropping or settling plainly ridiculous, bad faith cases.
Independent Agencies
Just shy of the 100-day mark and over two months after he was nominated, Biden’s first nominee to an independent agency board, Gary Gensler, has been confirmed. Gensler is wasting no time assembling his team to take on the agency’s new priorities, which include climate risk, “Special Purpose Acquisition Companies” and cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, many other agencies are still awaiting nominees, let alone confirmed officials. Considering it is likely to take at least a couple of months for these leaders to be confirmed at the current rate (and, in reality, it seems likely that things are set to get even slower), Biden really should not waste any additional time before sending names to the Senate.
Careful observers of the Agency Spotlight will have noted that the number of vacancies jumped last week. This time, it was not a wave of departures but the addition of a new, troubled agency: the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board (IRSOB). IRSOB is a nine member board, made up of the Treasury Secretary, the IRS Commissioner, and seven other members. Since 2015, only one of those seven seats has been filled, leaving the board without a quorum and unable to function.
As our Sion Bell explains, that represents a real blow to tax justice. IRSOB has the responsibility “to ensure that the IRS is performing its duties fairly, that taxpayer services are adequate, and that the IRS is prepared for future tax-related demands. It is also tasked with reviewing and approving the IRS’s yearly budget request (something it would be doing right about now if it had sufficient members) and with conducting a yearly survey on taxpayer attitudes. And, importantly, it is the main oversight body for the IRS Commissioner and advises the president on who to appoint for the position and on whether or not the Commissioner should be fired.”
Sounds like an institution we could really use right now.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Silicon Valley’s Favorite Fixer Aims to Stop the Rising Left
In Latest Disappointment From Yellen, John Morton Is Treasury's New Climate Counselor
The Trump Administration Made a Mockery of the Law. Why Hasn't Biden Tossed its Cases?
Revolver Spotlight: Sarah Bianchi
Big Pharma's Coils Around COVID-19 Vaccines Likely Protected By Raimondo, Zients, Ricchetti
Biden's Build Back Better is Behind Schedule
The Brother Of A Pharma Lobbyist Advises Biden As He Weighs Vaccine IP Waiver
Neglected IRS Oversight Board A Crucial Component of Tax Justice
Why Is Politico's Ryan Heath Carrying Water For Big Pharma Monopolies?
Morning Tech 4/25/21
FLOTUS and Cardona hit the road again
Becerra takes heat as migrant children wait for shelters
Yellen picks investor as Treasury climate czar, sparking backlash from the left
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