President-elect Joe Biden’s executive actions aim to address the “four crises:" Covid-19, the economic downturn, climate change, and racial injustice.
Chief of staff Ron Klain said that Biden wants to carry out immediate action after his inauguration speech.
“He’s going to come back to the White House after giving that speech at the Capitol and take some immediate actions to start to move this country forward,” Klain told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
In a memorandum sent to incoming White House staff, Klain explained that Biden’s plans for his first days include rejoining the Paris climate change agreement and reversing President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Biden also plans to sign executive actions about reopening businesses and schools. He will “direct his Cabinet agencies to take immediate action to deliver economic relief to working families bearing the brunt of this crisis,” the memo states.
Moreover, the new president will take “significant early actions to advance equity and support communities of color and other underserved communities.” He will implement measures to respond to climate change, improve health care access, and “restore dignity to our immigration system and our border policies.”
Biden will officially take office on Wednesday at noon ET. Klain said that the message of Biden’s inauguration would be “a message of moving this country forward, a message of unity, a message of getting things done.”
In the memo sent to staff Saturday, Klain pointed out the challenges being faced by the country.
“We face four overlapping and compounding crises: the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis, and a racial equity crisis,” Klain wrote in the memo.
“In his first ten days in office, President-elect Biden will take decisive action to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harms, and restore America’s place in the world,” Klain added.
Biden’s executive actions appear in multiple forms, including presidential memoranda, executive orders, and directives to Cabinet agencies.
The memorandum does not have complete details and suggests that Biden is spacing out the executive actions to emphasize the activity.
It also underscores that while the objectives appear “bold,” they are supported by “well-founded” legal theory and represent “a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the President.”
Klain also said in the memo that legislation will be required for the administration’s bigger agenda items, including immigration reform and improving the federal minimum wage.
Biden laid out his $1.9 billion Covid-19 relief agenda on Thursday, which aims to address the public health crisis as well as provide cash to help the economy recover. The plan also aims to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“We are 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, but they elected an evenly divided Senate, they elected a closely divided Congress, we are going to have to find ways for Democrats and Republicans to get things done,” he added.
