February 2021 Volume 3

WASHINGTON UPDATE

Executive Orders Like all past modern presidential terms, the first few days and weeks of the new Biden-Harris administration will bear witness to numerous executive orders. So far, we have learned that some of these will be focused on efforts to: • Extend pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments; • Expand testing; • Issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel; • Help schools and businesses reopen safely; • Expand “Buy America” provisions; • Support communities of color and other underserved communities; • Rescind the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries; • Rejoin the Paris climate change accord; • Order agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from families after crossing the border; and • Protect workers and clarify public health standards related to COVID. Legislation Immigration. The Biden transition team has been working with members of Congress to write a comprehensive immigration reform bill that we’re hearing will be introduced shortly after Biden takes office. Details on the bill are under close hold, but folks who have been read-in have called the plan “broad and sweeping.” Pandemic and economic relief. In addition, Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion recovery package to deal with the COVID pandemic that he hopes Congress will pass with a bipartisan vote in February. The comprehensive package includes funding to: • Mount a national vaccination program, including setting up community vaccination sites nationwide; • Scale up testing and tracing; • Eliminate supply shortage problems with vaccines and tests; • Invest in high-quality treatments; • Provide paid sick leave to contain spread of the virus; • Make the necessary investments to hopefully safely reopen a majority of K-8 schools in the first 100 days; • Provide $1,400 per-person checks to households across America (up to a certain gross income); • Provide direct housing and nutrition assistance; • Expand access to safe and reliable childcare and affordable healthcare; • Increase the minimumwage to $15 an hour; • Extend unemployment insurance; and

That did not happen. In what can only be described as a political earthquake, Democrats Raphael Warlock and John Ossoff defeated Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. The Senate now stands evenly split at 50-50. This means that once Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in as president and vice president on January 20th, the Senate will be in Democratic control, as Vice President Harris will cast the 51st vote in her role as President of the Senate. This also means that Democrats will now have unified control of government (Senate, House, andWhite House). But unified control does not mean that anything can be done easily. Voting margins are tight (again, the Senate is 50 to 50; the House is 222 to 213); and for those who know Senate procedure, it still takes 60 votes to pass legislation. So policies to rescue and grow our economy, to stave off the pandemic, and to reassert our role on the world stage will take cooperation and compromise. And the reality is that there will always exist an ideological divide on matters of legislative substance like immigration, healthcare, taxes, and government spending, among others. This will be a challenge. Another challenge is impeachment. What hasn’t been mentioned yet is the fact that a week after the siege of the Capitol, the House of Representatives impeached President Trump for a second time by a bipartisan vote of 232 to 197. The single article of impeachment was for the purposes of “incitement of insurrection.” As of this writing, it is unclear when or if a trial to convict will begin in the Senate. What is for certain is that if a trial happens, it will occur after Trump has left office. What is also for certain is that if a trial happens, it will delay legislative activity surrounding COVID response, economic relief, cabinet confirmations and other critical business. President Trump’s impeachment trial in January and February of 2020 took 20 days. We do not see this trial taking as long, but it will nevertheless take up precious floor time in the Senate, further delaying legislative activity. So all of this creates a murky picture for where we see policy heading, both in terms of substance and success. But here is where we believe efforts will be made to try (and please note this is based off our best intelligence, but full details – including schedule – have not been made public):

6

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2021