President Joe Biden is coming under pressure to exercise the power of his pen before the 2022 midterm elections.
But while signing executive orders, proclamations, and memoranda may satiate an impatient Democratic base amid congressional gridlock, Biden and the party risk playing into Republican strategists’ hands.
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Biden flexed his executive muscle Tuesday by announcing the first three pardons and 75 commutations of his administration for Second Chance Month, concentrating on nonviolent drug offenders. The highly anticipated move comes months after negotiations on Capitol Hill between the likes of Sens. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, collapsed.
But the clemency celebrations staged at the White House by former President Donald Trump were not emulated by Biden. The incumbent did not promote his own work. Instead, senior administration officials hosted a virtual event in the afternoon, which was only added to the public schedule that morning and coincided with White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s briefing.
And during that briefing, Psaki was careful to underscore the successful petitioners “had less than four years to serve” of their sentences.
“A good percentage of them, and I can find the exact number in here, are also already under home confinement,” she said.
Biden’s balancing act regarding crime and criminal justice reform follows a campaign spent amplifying racial issues while dealing with criticism concerning Democratic calls to “defund the police” amid a crime surge. And now, more than a year in, he has the added complication of dismal poll numbers. On average, 41% of respondents approved of Biden as president, and 54% disapproved, according to a RealClearPolitics poll.
University of Minnesota Center for the Study of Politics and Governance Director Larry Jacobs agreed Biden is “walking a tightrope.”
“Biden is working to hold on to progressives by using his powers to ease incarceration while focusing on nonviolent offenders in order to deflect attacks from the tough-on-violent-crime charges,” Jacobs told the Washington Examiner.
Besides the pardons and commutations, Biden announced Tuesday that the Justice Department and Labor Department would be collaborating for the first time on a $145 million job training program for the roughly 600,000 people released from prison every year and that the latter would be offering $140 million in workforce development grants. The administration is aiming to remove barriers for federal government employment and opportunities to obtain small business capital as well.
Reporters had previously plied Psaki for information related to Biden’s criminal justice reform executive action intentions earlier this month after Minnesota authorities declined to charge the SWAT officer who shot dead 22-year-old black man Amir Locke while conducting a homicide investigation no-knock search.
“Since Republicans refuse to support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, we are looking at additional steps we can take,” Psaki said at the time. “We are continuing to look at them, on executive action, to advance police reform, obviously something we put a pause on while that was being negotiated.”
But Biden is under pressure more broadly to deploy executive action in the hope of appealing to disappointed Democratic voters before November. Republicans have a 4-percentage-point average edge on generic congressional ballot polling and a historical trend advantage.
For context, Biden has signed 87 executive orders during his administration, from healthcare to gun edicts. In comparison, Trump issued 220 fiats, Barack Obama 276, George W. Bush 291, and Bill Clinton 254 over the course of their respective terms of different lengths.
But Republicans, such as former Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, predicted that any rash decisions made by Biden and his aides may help the GOP this cycle.
“Although concerns about executive overreach could enhance Republican turnout, there is no doubt that the likely radical nature of Biden’s executive actions will motivate conservative voters this fall,” the onetime Tea Party Caucus chairman said. “Anything that Biden might do to deliver something for Democrat voters will just further expose how far left the Democrats have gone.”
The most sustained, organized executive action pressure has been with respect to student debt forgiveness. The most vocal advocate has been Biden’s former 2020 Democratic presidential nomination rival and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been urging Biden to cancel $50,000 in federal student debt unilaterally.
“Democrats win when Democrats are in touch with the American people and what’s happening to them,” she told CBS last weekend. “Not everything has to go through Congress. We picked the example of student loan debt. That would affect about 43 million people. That matters.”
Another policy area is immigration after multiple attempts to include legislative language in streamlined, simple-majority reconciliation spending bills failed. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus told reporters at the White House on Monday that they lobbied Biden in person for executive action covering temporary protective status and reuniting 4 million people with their families.
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“The executive orders and actions presented will inspire younger generations to engage with us and the Biden administration [and] empower them — and send a clear message they are not forgotten,” California Rep. Raul Ruiz, the caucus’s chairman, said.
