“Finish the job” was a fitting theme for President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address. It provided a valuable oratorical perch from which Biden could both tout his impressive legislative successes of the last two years and call on Congress to pass laws that, to quote Biden himself, help build an economy and support a society “from the bottom up and the middle out.”
But Biden needs to heed his own call to “finish the job.” That’s glaring omission number one.
To achieve his policy goals, Biden is not totally dependent upon Congress. He can accomplish much by pursuing an aggressive regulatory agenda to implement existing laws, such as the Clean Air Act or the Dodd-Frank Act, that awaited him on his inauguration day.
The story of the last two years has largely been a failure to do that. The tea leaves, in the form of Biden’s recently released Fall 2022 regulatory agenda, suggest his administration does not plan to take a more assertive approach to regulation next year, either.
This concern applies equally to new laws Congress sent Biden, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. When it comes to implementing these laws, the task of “finishing the job” falls squarely on Biden’s shoulders. That means quickly rolling out the funding those laws authorized and establishing their programs, such as the Inflation Reduction Act’s new charges for methane emissions from covered oil and gas development facilities.
A Rhetorical Failure
In Tuesday’s speech, Biden also called on Congress to take new legislative action on a broad array of policy goals: strengthening workers’ right to organize; preventing the pharmaceutical industry from gouging consumers; and protecting kids’ privacy on the internet, to name a few. I’m skeptical such measures will pass in this divided Congress, but if they do, the task of implementation will once again fall to Biden. It will be Biden’s job to “finish.”
With respect to the second glaring omission, Biden missed a golden opportunity to begin reconnecting the American people to our government — a rhetorical link that our nation desperately needs after more than 40 years of dangerous neoliberal ideology that has successfully pushed us apart. Biden’s rhetoric still tended to reflect and reinforce this view, which holds that we, the people, are somehow conceptually distinct from our government. Under this blinkered approach, the American people are largely passive objects of public policy, with very little agency to control it outside of the episodic exercise of voting.
Biden can and should begin promoting a different vision of Americans’ relationship to government — one that, until recently, had always been an essential element of our collective political thought. According to this recovered vision, Americans and our government are inextricably intertwined: “We, the people” are our government. Recent polling indicates that Biden has a big challenge ahead of him on this score.
Yet, if being American means anything, it means we have agency over our shared fate as a nation. And exercising that agency demands more than participating in elections.
Biden seemed to recognize this vision in a brief moment toward the end of his speech, when he asserted that it was within our power as Americans to “protect our democracy” after it had been pushed to the breaking point by the January 6 insurrection. According to the president, we can reclaim our government, and we can begin the hard work of rebuilding social trust, the deterioration of which has contributed greatly to the instability of our democratic institutions.
As he put it, “We are not bystanders to history. We are not powerless before the forces that confront us. It is within our power, of We the People. We are facing the test of our time and the time for choosing is at hand.”
In short, we have agency over this aspect of our shared project as a people. This passage was soaring, but it ended abruptly — and the president moved on.
Instead, Biden could have continued by inviting the public to imagine other ways they could reclaim government — other ways they could exercise agency as public citizens. The regulatory system, over which Biden has unique control, would have been one potential option to highlight.
Just as he promised to “see” Republican representatives “at the groundbreaking” of infrastructure projects in their home districts, Biden could have invited members of the public to meet him at rulemaking hearings on issues they care about, whether it’s climate change, the drug overdose epidemic, or police brutality.
This was the second State of the Union address in which Biden sought to restore unity among Democrats and Republicans for the good of our country. It might be more productive, though, if Biden instead focused on restoring unity between we, the people, and our government. If the heckling was any indication, Republicans are more interested in landing plum interview spots on Fox News than advancing the common good. For the foreseeable future, it seems the best hope for “finishing the job” lies with the Biden administration and the American people themselves.
Banner image courtesy of the White House.
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James Goodwin | February 9, 2023
“Finish the job” was a fitting theme for President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address. It provided a valuable oratorical perch from which Biden could both tout his impressive legislative successes of the last two years and call on Congress to pass laws that, to quote Biden himself, help build an economy and support a society “from the bottom up and the middle out.” But Biden needs to heed his own call to “finish the job.”
Allison Stevens | February 8, 2023
In his second State of the Union address, President Joe Biden hailed his administration’s significant accomplishments over the last two years and called on lawmakers to “finish the job” on a wide variety of policy issues. He uttered the phrase over and over — more than a dozen times, in fact — in relation to everything from repairing the economy and controlling the cost of prescription drugs to expanding access to affordable health insurance and making the tax code fairer. About a third of the way through his 73-minute speech, he called on the country to “finish the job” when it comes to climate change.
Daniel Farber | February 7, 2023
In their crusade against “wokeness,” congressional Republicans are taking aim at a Labor Department rule about pension plan investments. The rule’s transgression is apparently that it makes it easier for pension plans to consider how climate-related risks might affect a company’s bottom line. To avoid being woke, the GOP would apparently prefer pension managers to close their eyes to financial realities, sleepwalking their way through the climate crisis. The real fear, of course, is that more wide-awake investment might disfavor some of the GOP’s biggest corporate supporters.
James Goodwin | January 31, 2023
Where are President Joe Biden’s regulatory process reforms? That’s the question many progressive advocates have been asking since the administration released its Day One memo inaugurating a “process with the goal of producing a set of recommendations for improving and modernizing regulatory review.” Two years later, this process remains in limbo.
Rebecca Bratspies | January 20, 2023
Arriving in New York City, you might take the Van Wyck Expressway past the Jackie Robinson Parkway on your way from JFK airport. Or you might cross the Kościuszko Bridge as you travel from LaGuardia airport. Or you might take the George Washington Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway. Or, you might use the Goethals Bridge, or the Pulaski Skyway, or the Outerbridge Crossing. What, if anything, would those trips tell you about the city (other than that we desperately need better mass transit)? All this infrastructure commemorates individuals who helped shape the city’s history. Yet, few people remember that, before these names became a shorthand for urban congestion, they were actual people.
James Goodwin | January 18, 2023
The federal judiciary is in crisis. Now stocked with conservative jurists who openly disdain the courts’ limited constitutional role and actively dismiss the public they serve, this critical branch of our government presents an unacceptable risk to the stability of our democracy and economy. But there are solutions at hand.
Robert L. Glicksman | January 17, 2023
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its environmental regulatory state partners have engaged in many important successful efforts to foster compliance with regulatory obligations through enforcement actions and otherwise. But in her new book, Next Generation Compliance: Environmental Regulation in the Modern Era, Cynthia Giles documents widespread and significant noncompliance with these obligations.
James Goodwin | January 12, 2023
In case you missed it, the Biden administration capped off 2022 with the release of a new “open government” plan that aims to improve access to federal data and information, better engage the public in the regulatory process, and streamline delivery of government services and benefits.
Ajulo Othow, Sidney A. Shapiro | January 11, 2023
This op-ed was originally published in the Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Journal and the Greensboro (North Carolina) News & Record. The Winston-Salem Journal recently reported that Walmart had joined environmental and climate advocates in opposition to Duke Energy’s proposed carbon reduction plan, which is now under review by the N.C. Energy Commission. In the clash of […]