With Republicans set to regain control of the House, pundits predict resident Joe Biden will rely on the pen to make his administrative actions as a divided Congress limits his legislation wins.
The President has already issued several executive orders during his time in the Oval Office, the most significant being the President’s currently stalled student loan forgiveness program, which Biden signed off on in August.
Activist groups want Biden to move on more progressive issues like reforming Marijuana legislation, addressing climate change, and workers’ rights.
Advocates believe Biden should use the Democrats’ better-than-expected midterm results to pursue the issues he campaigned on in 2020, using these reforms to make a case for why he should be reelected in 2024.
A campaigns director for the Sunshine Movement, Deidra Shelly, called for Biden to “ramp up” his use of executive powers in the next Congress in favor of young Americans who she described as having “saved” Democrats in the midterm elections.
Shelly suggested Biden sign more executive orders to cancel even more student loan forgiveness programs, declare a climate emergency, and utilize the “Defense Production Act to expedite” the U.S.’s transition to renewable energy, among others, to “help the lives of people across the country.”
Our Revolution’s communication and campaigns director, Paco Fabian, noted that for Biden to get the progressive vote, he wouldn’t “be able to rest on laurels” until 2024. Instead, Fabian insisted that Biden would have to achieve more than he had in the last two years.
