President-elect Joe Biden plans to take immediate executive action after his inaugural address this week to turn the page on the Trump era, Chief of Staff Ron Klain said Sunday after setting out Biden’s plan for his first few days in the office.
Biden plans a 10-day blitz of executive action on what his administration has dubbed the country’s “four crises” problems – Covid-19, economic downturn, racial injustice and climate change.
“He will return to the White House after this speech in the Capitol and take immediate action to move this country forward,” Klain told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Biden will officially take office on Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET. Klain said Biden’s inaugural address was “a message to move this country forward, a message of unity, a message to get things done”.
Klain outlined Biden’s plans for his first few days in a memorandum to White House staff sent to NBC News on Saturday entitled “A Review of the First Ten Days.”
“We are facing four overlapping and worsening crises: the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis and a racist stock crisis,” Klain wrote in the memo.
“In his first ten days in office, President-elect Biden will act decisively to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harm, and restore America’s place in the world,” added Klain.
The executive actions take a variety of forms, including executive orders, presidential memoranda, and instructions to cabinet agencies.
The first steps Biden will take on Wednesday include re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement and lifting President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which applies to several Muslim-majority countries. Biden will also require masks for federal estates and interstate travel, and will take steps to expand eviction and foreclosure restrictions.
On Thursday, Biden will sign executive measures related to reopening schools and businesses, and on Friday he will “instruct his cabinet agencies to take immediate action to provide economic aid to working families who are bearing the brunt of this crisis,” it said in the memo.
The following week, according to the memo, Biden will “take significant early action to promote justice and support communities of color and other underserved communities.”
Biden will also take action this week to address climate change, expand access to health care, and “restore the dignity of our immigration system and border policies.”
The memorandum contains few details and states that Biden splits up executive action to highlight the activity.
It is also noted that the objectives behind executive action, while “bold”, are backed by “sound” legal theory and are “a restoration of an adequate constitutional role for the President”.
Klain wrote in the memo that legislation will be required for the administration’s more ambitious agenda items, including immigration reform and the increase in the federal minimum wage.
Biden on Thursday unveiled his $ 1.9 billion Covid-19 relief agenda, which calls for action to combat the public health crisis and new cash injections to stimulate the economy. The plan would also raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour.
Democrats control the House of Representatives and will soon take control of the Senate after two Republicans were defeated in Georgia’s Senate runoff earlier this month. But Klain said Sunday that, given the small Democratic majority, the Biden team would push for GOP support for its plans.
Democrats have 222 seats in the House of Representatives compared to the GOP’s 212, and the parties will split the Senate equally between 50 and 50, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris able to break votes that break the votes.
“We’re going to try to work hard with people in both parties,” Klain said on CNN.
“The American people voted in November and they voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, no question about it, but they elected an evenly divided Senate, they elected a tightly divided Congress, we have to find ways that Democrats and Republicans do Get things done. ” ,” he added.
