As President Joe Biden embarks on a renewed campaign trail, an analysis by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reveals that much of his economic agenda, outlined during the 2020 campaign, had not yet progressed.
Despite signing a monumental $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law and facilitating negotiations for lower prescription prices for Medicare recipients, a considerable portion of Biden's economic promises faces stalling and opposition in Congress, according to the WSJ.
Economic Agenda of Joe Biden Faces Roadblocks
The analysis identifies the economy as the primary category in which nearly all of Joe Biden's major promises remain in limbo, mostly due to congressional opposition.
Some of these stalled initiatives are the proposals for student loan relief, 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, a minimum wage hike, and a reversal of former President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts.
Business Insider reported that while Biden did manage to revive the child tax credit under his pandemic stimulus law, it expired at the end of 2021.
One of the president's pivotal pledges during the 2020 campaign was the reversal of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, but the Senate blocked it.
Biden's ambitious plan to cancel up to $20,000 of federal borrowers' student loan debt also faced a setback in June when it was overturned in the Supreme Court.
Congressional roadblocks extend to other economic promises made by Biden in 2020, including the proposals for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, a plan to spend $775 billion on child and elder care over 10 years, and a rise in the federal minimum wage to $15.
Climate Achievements of Joe Biden
Apart from the economy, the WSJ's analysis also peered at how well Joe Biden kept his 2020 campaign promises in the immigration, foreign policy, climate, criminal justice, and guns categories. Notably, it was in the climate category that Biden had the most tremendous success in fulfilling his crucial campaign promises.
In his term, the president has followed his promise to rejoin the 2015 Paris accord, revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, and incorporate new spending on renewable energy and incentives for electric vehicles in his $2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act.
However, he fell short of his pledge to stop all new offshore drilling as over 12 million acres of US federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico are already under lease to oil and gas firms.
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