He's done an excellent job under very difficult circumstances, wracking up considerably more wins than I would have thought possible four years ago.
Some high points, in no particular order:
- Actually did build back better, achieving G7-leading real GDP growth, restoring real wage growth, sparking a productivity boom, and stewarding the longest stretch of sub-4% unemployment in half a century while overseeing the first real decreases in inequality in recent memory
- Immediately stabilized a teetering economy, pushing through aid to families that achieved unprecedented reductions in poverty (particularly child poverty), housing instability, and uninsurance
- Guided the country out of the pandemic (e.g., massively successful vaccine rollout and use of the DPA to produce key supplies, while pushing through the American Rescue Plan to keep the economy afloat)
- Untangled the post-COVID supply chain crisis, mitigating the post-pandemic price spikes
- Beefed up the Affordable Care Act, lowering health care costs for millions of Americans and pushing uninsurance to an all-time low
- Finally got Medicare the authority to negotiate prescription drug prices, poising seniors and taxpayers to save billions
- Is making huge and long-awaited investments in American infrastructure, including roads and bridges, rail, the power grid, and broadband
- Is making huge investments in American science and manufacturing capacity, leading to (among other things) the current American factory-building boom
- Finally ended 20 years of futility in Afghanistan and de-escalated the drone war
- Made the largest investment in combating climate change in American history, sparking (among other things) an electric vehicle price war
- Made competition policy a centerpiece of his agenda, chilling the ongoing consolidation of our markets
- Reasserted American's role as the leader of the free world and arsenal of democracy, realigning the U.S. against authoritarianism
- Finally reformed the Postal Service, providing a pathway to fix its fiscal crisis
- Has repeatedly backed the current resurgence of labor
- Negotiated a global minimum corporate tax to preserve American competitiveness
- Stood up to China, restricting their access to advanced chips, limiting U.S. investment in China, and gearing up to cut off their access to American cloud-computing services
- Revamped the income-driven student loan repayment plans to make them more affordable for borrowers (I'll throw into this item Biden actually honoring the government's commitments under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program instead of screwing then over red tape nonsense)
- Got the first bipartisan gun control legislation in three decades (one in a string of unexpected bipartisan successes Biden achieved)
- Got better health care for vets exposed to toxic substances (over inexplicable GOP opposition)
- Has taken the first steps toward decriminalizing marijuana, starting with blanket pardons
- Implemented a whole slew of consumer protections for families on everything from the obligations airlines have around the way they treat their customers to surprise medical billing to disclosure of junk fees
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