Biden Transition Team Website Goes Live
November 9, 2020
President-Elect Joe Biden's transition team has launched a website to communicate their plans for day one of the new administration. They have identified four priorities; COVID-19, Economic Recovery, Racial Equality, and Climate Change.
The administration is planning swift and aggressive COVID-19 response that includes:
- Regular, reliable, free testing
- Ramped up provisioning of personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Guidance and resources for communities to navigate pandemic
- Equitable distribution of treatments and vaccines
- Protections for older Americans and people at high risk
- Defenses to predict, prevent, and mitigate pandemic threats
- Implementation of mask mandates nationwide (asking Governors to make masks mandatory in their states)
The economic recovery priority would follow the pandemic response with an emphasis on:
- Manufacturing in America
- Building a modern infrastructure
- Clean energy
- Pay increases, benefits, and professional opportunities for caregivers and educators
- Racial equality
Racial equality is highlighted in the Biden-Harris administration plans through:
- A new small business opportunity plan
- Reformed opportunity zones
- Equalized federal procurement
- Access to affordable housing
- Equity in opportunities connected to jobs of the future
- Boosting retirement security and financial wealth for minority families
- Fair compensation and treatment with dignity for workers of color
- Equity in clean energy and infrastructure investments
- Second chances for economic success
- Federal Reserve focus on racial economic gaps
- Diversity and accountability in leadership across federal agencies
- 21st century care infrastructure
- Inequities in agriculture
The administration also intends to pass police reform legislation and reduce the number of people incarcerated in the US while reducing crime.
The climate change agenda includes investments in:
- Infrastructure - Rebuild roads and bridges, water systems, electricity grids, and provide universal broadband, access to clean air and clean water.
- Auto Industry - Create jobs for American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, auto infrastructure and electric vehicle charging stations
- Transit - Provide zero-emission public transportation options and infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists in cities with 100,000 or more residents
- Power Sector - Create carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035
- Buildings - Upgrade buildings, weatherize homes over the next 4 years with rebates and low-cost financing
- Housing - Construct 1.5 million sustainable homes
- Innovation - Reduce cost and commercialize critical clean energy technologies that are made in America
- Agriculture and Conservation - Have climate-smart agriculture, resilience, conservation. Plug abandoned oil and natural gas wells, reclaim abandoned coal, hardrock, and uranium mines. Reduce toxic leakage and prevent local environmental damage.
- Environmental Justice - Ensure that environmental justice is a key consideration in where, how, and with whom we build.
The recurring emphasis for each agenda item except housing and innovation is support for creating union jobs or ensuring the choice to join a union.