The Fall Agenda Few Are Talking About
Newsletter 93: The months ahead will be critical to robust executive branch action too
The summer break -- if there ever really was one -- is over. Lawmakers are making their way back to D.C. this week and next to tackle a long legislative to-do list. The accompanying intrigue will inevitably dominate the conversation through the end of the year.
Despite how it will be portrayed, however, the endless legislative to and fro will not be the only thing of consequence unfolding in Washington this fall. The coming months will be pivotal for the Biden administration’s executive branch agenda as well. Will those appointees who are already in office deploy their considerable powers fully and expeditiously to advance the public interest? Will they lay the groundwork, in terms of administrative capacity and organizational changes, to maximize their agency’s impact? Will the White House move more quickly to make critical outstanding appointments? Will it work with the Senate to get them through faster? As the end of Biden’s first year in office bears down, the answers to these questions will determine his administration’s success, both in terms of policy outcomes and its political prospects. You can count on the Revolving Door Project to be monitoring them closely.
(Reporters and allies: please always feel free to reach out to us to elaborate on any of these topics!)
Personnel
230 days after Biden’s inauguration, the work of assessing new appointees is far from done. Hundreds of positions, including some that are very powerful, still lack nominees. We’re still waiting on a Director for the Office of Management and Budget, an Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Assistant Attorneys General for the Tax and Justice Programs Division, a Commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration and for the Social Security Administration, and a Comptroller of the Currency, to name just a few. For as long as these and other vacancies persist, we will be calling attention to the ways they undermine the Biden agenda and the public interest. When names do emerge, we will scrutinize them as closely as ever to ensure that this administration is living up to its promises and its potential with all remaining appointments.
These vacancies notwithstanding, the Biden administration is starting to look much more substantial, with most agenda-setting positions either filled or set to be filled in the coming months. The imperative, therefore, is starting to shift from one of influencing the administration’s composition, to pushing those who are in place to action. In response, we’ll be expanding our efforts to track key agencies’ actions and hold them up against what is possible. We’ve already started at the Department of Justice, where the gap between what it is doing and what it could be doing is gaping. As I explained for the American Prospect, this is particularly troubling because the DOJ, as a purveyor of legal advice and the government’s litigator, will be central to Biden’s bold agenda in every corner of the administration. Of course, it will be critical that each of those corners is also independently working as hard as possible to move that agenda forward. While some are meeting that demand, others are already falling short. We’ve noted, for example, Yellen’s Treasury Department’s disappointing performance when it comes to tackling climate change (a critique that several Senators echoed earlier this month). We will do the same across a wide range of financial regulatory, competition, housing, and economic agencies (with some others periodically thrown in for good measure).
One key metric that we’ll increasingly be monitoring will be agencies’ performance with regards to corporate law enforcement. It’s no secret (Jesse Eisinger wrote a book about it! And Brandon Garrett’s oeuvre is another great resource) that we have a crisis of corporate impunity in this country and that the federal government, through some combination of apathy and inability, has failed for years to do anything about it. Changing that must be a priority for the Biden administration. And practically every component of the executive branch has some role to play. So, we’ll be asking: are agencies tackling corporate power? Are they holding senior corporate officials to account? Are they taking steps to ensure that their enforcement actions are not just a slap on the wrist that do nothing to prevent wrongdoing in the future?
Of course, throughout it all, you can always count on us to be keeping track of and opposing the sort of ethical backsliding which threatens public trust in this administration. As we’ve detailed extensively, the administration’s ethical standards, while certainly better than what has come before, are still not enough to reliably guard against corporate conflicts of interest. Consider one recent appointee, Amos Hochstein, who worked at a fossil gas company until 2020 and will now be the administration’s special envoy for energy affairs. Hardly a good look as climate-fueled disasters proliferate with alarming speed and force. That’s not even to mention cases where the Biden administration has allowed appointees to evade its ethics rules through administrative tricks, as with Anita Dunn. While we’re certain the Biden administration does not appreciate the criticism, we’re sincere in our belief that shunning these sorts of conflicts is not just some arbitrary “purity test,” but clearly in their political interests. (Ending the neurotic fear of prosecuting lawbreaking Trump officials would promote the rule of law and make a positive contrast in ethics more clear to the electorate.)
Governance
To have any hope of implementing its agenda on the timeline necessary, the Biden administration needs to start moving faster to rebuild the federal government’s capacity to act. Without the people and systems in place to implement new programs quickly and effectively, virtually none of the President’s promises will be able to be realized. This week, for example, the Washington Post reported that federal officials are estimating that getting the Medicare dental expansion off the ground will take anywhere from three to five years. Keep in mind that that is just one of many ambitious programs included in the legislative packages that will be moving this fall. Under current conditions, others are likely to take even longer.
The Biden administration, to its credit, has advocated significant changes to those conditions, with major proposed budget increases to support new hiring (although, as we’ve highlighted before, many of those proposals still fall short of what’s needed and should be augmented in the actual appropriations process). The administration, however, cannot wait to begin the process of rebuilding until new funding is available. Given the scale of the projects that are in the pipeline and the severity of the capacity crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that every second counts. The administration should be using all of the tools at its disposal -- hiring flexibilities, expanded recruitment, etc. -- to start getting people in the door now and to ensure that agencies can quickly hire up once new funding is in hand. Until there’s evidence that the administration is making use of every available avenue to address this problem, we will be unsympathetic to arguments that they simply don’t have the capacity to deliver on their promises.
So long as holdovers from the Trump administration remain in place, we are similarly skeptical of claims that they are doing all that they can to address white supremacy, the climate crisis, economic inequality, and any number of other problems. Well over 200 days into his presidency, for example, Biden still hasn’t fired FBI Director Chris Wray. That is despite the fact that, on one of his most high-profile tasks -- pursuing participants in the insurrection -- he has neglected to hold even a single press conference and has regularly ignored lawmakers’ requests for information.
Wray isn’t the only holdover who has held on this long. There’s IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, of course. And then there’s a cast of lesser known figures who need to go. Consider, for example, Thomas Workman, a member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council who has framed climate change as a matter that is up for debate. There’s also Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal and Office of Financial Research Director Dino Falaschetti. These figures are political appointees who can be removed from office at any moment. There are also several senior career officials who are working at odds with the Biden administration’s agenda. See, for example, Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees, Clifford White, who seems intent on making bankruptcy more difficult and less successful for the poorest families. It’s notable as well that the administration seems to be doing nothing about many known burrowers who are in a position to undermine its goals.
Independent Agencies
Over the summer, we have gotten a handful of new independent agency nominations but many high-profile omissions remain. Biden still has not nominated a Chair for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nor candidates for openings at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Reserve, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and United States Sentencing Commission (USSC), among others. The lack of nominations here is especially troubling because these seats cannot be filled by acting officials. What’s more, thanks to the considerable confirmation backlog in the Senate, it’s all but certain that we will have to wait months from the time of nomination for these seats to be filled. (Note that, if he doesn’t move soon, the FCC risks having a Republican majority in January because current acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel will be required to step down on the second of that month.)
This makes it all the more clear that the Senate confirmation process, like so many other Senate practices, is in need of an overhaul. It is simply untenable for confirmations to take so much time and for them to be susceptible to sabotage by the opposing party. To speed the process, we’ve suggested batching nominees for debate on the Senate floor and doing away with unnecessary “layover periods'' between introduction and votes. Let’s hope September is a month of Senate rule changes: to the filibuster, debate time, and anything else that needs remaking.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Merrick Garland Is Failing His Biggest Test
Biden Oil Envoy Advised Emirati Gas Firm and Owns Stock in Human Rights-Violating Companies
Coalition Calls On President Biden To Consider Four Key Principles In Fed Nominations
Biden Must Prioritize Rural Development To Help Rebuild The Heartland
Clash among progressives is boosting the Fed chief’s path to keeping his job
Powell Gets Unlikely Boost With His Liberal Critics in Disarray
The Rick Smith Show, August 31
Climate hawks pressure Biden to replace Fed chair
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