What to expect in Biden’s first 100 days as President

Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith joins Yahoo Finance News Senior Political Reporter Jon Ward to discuss what to expect in Biden’s first 100 days as President.

影片文字紀錄

[INTRO MUSIC PLAYING]

- Now shortly after taking the oath of office, President Biden had tweeted out that there was no time to waste when it came time to tackling this crisis. So let's talk a little bit more about some of those policy priorities going forward. I want to bring in our next panel. We have Yahoo! Finance's Jessica Smith and Yahoo! News senior political correspondent Jon Ward here with this-- here with us now. So Jess, I want to go to you first. About those top priorities for President Biden over the course of the next 100 days and also four years.

JESSICA SMITH: Yeah, well, let's just start with today. President Biden is going to sign 17 executive actions today. We're expecting him to start signing those at 5:15 this evening. He is going to start with some actions that are aimed at tackling the pandemic and easing the economic pain that so many are feeling right now. So also, there are going to be things looking at rolling back policies that President Trump has put in place.

So here are some of the specific actions that he's planning on first. He's going to start asking everyone to wear masks for 100 days. He's launching this "100 Days of Masking Challenge." He's also mandating masks on federal property and on interstate travel.

He's going to extend the pause on student loan payments, and he'll extend restrictions on evictions. He's also going to create a position of the COVID-19 Response Coordinator, a person who reports directly to him who is going to be in charge of the response when it comes to directing PPE, vaccines, testing, getting those out to everyone who needs them.

He's also going to do some other things that he promised a long ago before the pandemic was even on our radar, which was reversing the travel ban to Muslim majority countries, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. And he says he's going to take action to roll back some of the environmental provisions that President Trump put in place. And he's hoping to do that to fight climate change.

And it's not all executive actions. He's also planning on sending an immigration bill to Congress today. That bill will provide a pathway to citizenship for some estimated 11 million undocumented people in the US. His incoming chief of staff did say to expect more executive actions over the next week or so. So we could see more things such as strengthening by American provisions. That was something else.

He mentioned tomorrow we could see more aimed at safely reopening businesses and schools. So he's getting it right-- he's getting started right now, 5:15 this evening signing about 17 actions and then more to come in the next few days.

- Jon, not in the next few days but in the next few weeks perhaps, a tax plan that includes raising the corporate tax rate to 28% and possibly raising the highest tax rate to 39.6%, where it had been in the past. What's the likelihood that President Biden's administration can deliver on that?

JON WARD: Well, they have a very narrow majority in the Senate, as everyone knows. And so I think their opening gambit here is going to be the beginning of a negotiation. They do have the ability to push tax changes through through a 51-seat majority in the Senate through budget reconciliation.

So if they want a really, you know, expend some political capital on raising tax rates, they can probably do that. But it's going to be part of a larger matrix in determining what else they're trying to accomplish and how much political capital they do want to use on pushing that through, I would say.

- Jessica Smith, Yahoo! Finance correspondent, Jon Ward, Yahoo! News senior political correspondent, thank you for joining us.