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What should happen as Biden winds down his presidency?

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Ben Olinsky: President Biden must take urgent action to maintain our democracy

In his first campaign ad of 2024, President Biden asked the question over images of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and January 6 rioters: “What will we do to maintain our democracy? History’s watching.” 

For one last month, Biden retains the responsibilities and powers of the nation’s highest office. If he believes his words, he must take urgent action to strengthen our democracy, even as he works to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

President-elect Donald Trump has made little secret of his desire for unchecked power, whether to be a dictator on day one, weaponize the Department of Justice against perceived enemies, or strip broadcast licenses from disfavored media outlets. However, this has yet to come to pass. America only has one president at a time. If Biden’s campaign ad was more than political bluster — and his lifetime of dedicated public service suggests it was heartfelt — he must now do everything he can to safeguard our fundamental rights. So, what can he do?

First, he can shore up protections for the dedicated career civil servants who keep us safe. Doctors, scientists and bank inspectors ensure the prescribed drugs are safe, our water is free of toxins, our jobs won’t cause us injury, and our life’s savings won’t disappear when we make a deposit. Civil servants in agencies like the FBI, CIA and Defense keep us safe from terrorists and foreign adversaries.

With his billionaire Cabinet picks and quid pro quo style, Trump will replace servants of the people with those who serve him. He doesn’t want career civil servants to blow the whistle when his actions sacrifice Americans’ safety and wellbeing for the benefit of wealthy friends. Solidifying job protections for civil servants gives them what authoritarians hate most: the ability to stand up, speak truth and ensure our laws are followed. 

Biden has prized himself for being the most labor-friendly president in a generation. Now, he must aggressively side with public workers in contract negotiations and offer whistleblower training to put our health and safety over the interests of billionaires.

Second, Biden can recognize the Equal Rights Amendment to protect women from impending attacks. Many in Trump’s orbit are pushing him to use draconian measures to block Americans’ access to reproductive care. His nominee for Defense secretary has said he believes women are less effective fighters and shouldn’t serve in ground combat units. 

Trump also has an eye to scale back efforts to combat sex discrimination in the workplace and health care. The ERA could offer vital constitutional protections. Virginia ratified it in 2020 and was the last state needed to bring it into force, but it has yet to be formally recognized as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, even as the nation’s leading scholars and the American Bar Association argue it has already been adopted. Biden has the power to clarify this once and for all.

Finally, Biden should do all he can to prepare our military, law enforcement and intelligence communities to uphold the rule of law and push back against attempts to weaponize them against law-abiding citizens. The Republican-led House of Representatives has passed two bills to safeguard journalists and stop the government from purchasing Americans’ private location, web history and search data without a warrant. Biden must press the Senate to take immediate action on these bills. 

Through training and guidance, he can also reiterate that presidential immunity does not shield military and law enforcement officers from the legal requirement to follow only lawful orders. Additionally, his administration can lay out constraints on the domestic deployment of federal forces, even if they are ultimately reversed.

Biden’s term isn’t over, nor is his responsibility to the children and grandchildren watching him, waiting to see what kind of America they will inherit. Urgent actions are sitting on the most powerful desk in America. We must now ask the life-long statesman and patriot who sits behind it: What will you do to protect our democracy?

Editor’s note: Ben Olinsky is the senior vice president for structural reform and governance policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.

Ryan Young: Biden should reduce presidential power

The American experiment can be summed up in one big idea: don’t put too much power in one place. That is why the federal government has three branches —  executive, legislative and judicial. Unfortunately, the modern presidency undermines that separation of powers and concentrates as much power as possible in itself. The best thing President Biden can do as he leaves office is to cut the presidency back down to size.

Perhaps people forget why it’s essential to keep the president in check. Presidential scholar Gene Healy observes that the public imagines the president as “a combination of guardian angel, shaman and supreme warlord of the earth.”

People expect the president to say healing words at every tragedy or natural disaster, cure diseases, manage business cycles, and fight injustice worldwide. He is supposed to create millions of jobs and reimagine entire industries.

No human being can meet those expectations. No wonder presidents often leave office deeply unpopular. As Biden experiences the downside of this cycle, his parting legacy could be a legitimate effort to restore the presidency and break the unpopularity curse.

Biden did the same thing most presidents do: give himself more power. That meant more spending and more regulations. Not only did this not solve any problems — the national debt is more than $36 trillion, inflation is still too high, and annual regulatory burdens are now more than $15,000 per household.

Biden would win the lasting respect of the people with a bold parting gesture: returning legislating powers back to Congress.

The executive branch now does most of the legislating. Congress passed 65 bills in 2023, but executive branch agencies issued 2,018 regulations. The difference is a factor of 46. Additional executive branch legislation comes from utterances from regulatory agencies: guidance documents, notices and press releases. The regulatory system is opaque, expensive, unfair and counterproductive. Congress’s lack of involvement is part of the reason.

Biden should return judiciary powers to courts. More than 40 regulatory agencies have their in-house court systems called administrative courts that operate outside the proper judicial branch. These agencies select their judges and pay their salaries. They set the rules for procedure and evidence and, perhaps not surprisingly, stack the deck in their favor. In these in-house agency courts, the government wins 90% of the time against only about 60% of cases in regular courts.

That is what it looks like when the president takes over other branches’ powers. We have checks and balances for good reason. They prevent abuse of power.

Where there isn’t abuse, there is incompetence. Washington can’t even build what its bill requires because the regulatory permits and environmental reviews take 4.5 years to finish before a shovel can break ground.

Another problem is mission creep. Executive branch agencies may start with a clear purpose but can’t resist expanding those missions. Biden initiated a  “whole-of-government” management philosophy. That meant the Federal Reserve was tasked with slowing climate change and the EPA with addressing economic inequality, for example. Neither agency is suited to those new tasks. 

Realistically, Biden won’t want to lose face by acknowledging this was a bad idea. So this reform — forcing agencies to stick to their original missions — must be left to the Trump administration.

Still, Biden should encourage people to expect less from their politicians. This cultural shift will take far more than a president’s speech, but it must start somewhere. It might as well be now.

The more power a president has, the more damage he can do. Each party warns about this when the other side takes power, but neither does anything about it. The least-followed rule in politics is not giving yourself any power you don’t want your opponents to have.

Trump’s rhetoric on executive power is even grander than Biden’s. He has made it plain that he will use his powers to raise import taxes, go after political opponents, pressure the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy, and grow federal debt even more.

Here is a novel idea. Triumphing Roman generals traditionally had a slave stand behind them on parade who whispered into his ear that he was a man, not a god. American presidents could use a similar aide. So, too, could the public.

Editor’s note: Ryan Young is a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.

Biden, Biden administration, presidency, democracy, January 6, peaceful transfer of power, Trump, Department of Justice, civil servants, women, Equal Rights Amendment, ERA, reproductive care, sex discrimination, rule of law, journalists, presidential immunity, American experiment, national debt, inflation, executive branch, executive power, abuse of power, Federal Reserve

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