 January 20 marks one year since the inauguration of Joe Biden as the President of the United States. Biden assumed office promising a drastic change from the policies of the Trump administration and welfare measures that would benefit the poor and working class of the country. A year later, this agenda is in dire peril and much of what was promised has not been delivered. How do we evaluate the performance of the Joe Biden administration in the past year? Eugene Purir of Breakthrough News explains. I think looking at Biden's first year, it seems very clear that he has totally failed to deliver almost any of his campaign promises, including the most core objectives that he was putting forward. So I think for the tens of millions of people who voted for Joe Biden, this has been a disappointment of a first year. Now, certainly there are many people who weren't expecting much like myself. But quite frankly, even for me, I have been surprised how little has happened. I mean, it's honestly amazing to think about how far we've come. I mean, of course, Joe Biden campaigned on and said that he was going to immediately through executive action, eliminate $10,000 worth of student debt. Not only has he not done that, but he has gone back and forth on whether or not to bring back in the student loan payments that had been paused during COVID-19 to try to prevent hardship amongst the millions of people who owe over a trillion dollars in student loans. So and in fact, even members of his own administration have essentially suggested that there should be no that under no circumstances, there'd be any forgiveness of any student loans. So not only has he not made that core promise, but it seems like he may actually go back on that. Certainly, we've seen this in the context of a range of expanded social programs that Biden had promoted campaign put forward. Also, just on the fact of a stimulus payment of $2,000, which of course was the rhetorical device that was used by Democrats to win the by election that took place in the Senate in Georgia in the January. So after the election had already taken place. And this was the final seat to give the Democrats the Senate majority, Biden, all the people in all the Democrats in Georgia, all the Democrats around the country that were showing up in Georgia say, we're going to send you a $2,000 check. Now they did send out a stimulus check, but it was for less money. And it was actually for a smaller number of people. And then of course, we saw the core agenda of Biden's build back better, that was bringing in expanded child tax credits, expanded community college, expanded access to a range of different things, a huge amount of funding for housing, all sorts of different pieces. This bill just completely expansion of healthcare, especially for the elderly and senior citizens. This bill totally collapsed. And now it seems like there's no option and no way forward, although there is some discussion about it moving forward, but essentially the core proposals of Biden and not really just Biden purely, but sort of the synthesis of what Biden brought together from the broader Democratic Party discourse. Of course, it was a very anti Trump campaign. Biden was trying to unite all of the Democrats and democratic leaning people against Trump and against the Republicans. He comes out with an agenda that's sort of a hodgepodge of different things that have been proposed by, you know, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden himself, Pete Buttigieg, all of the different contenders that had been in the race at some point, so that it had some sort of unifying effects among Democrats by bringing in a lot of popular policies amongst them, totally failed, totally fell flat, despite all of the provisions being overwhelmingly popular. Most of them are super majorities amongst the population. And we also saw the infrastructure bill that's been a major issue. It's been talked about significantly by presidents since President Obama in 2012. There's been almost no movement. I mean, this is a country where bridges are constantly collapsing, where tens of millions of people are drinking poisoned water, where the public transportation systems in almost every major city in America are completely falling apart, many of them just grinding to a halt. And this infrastructure push that Biden had been promoting through is one of the main things Biden was promoting. We're going to do a big infrastructure bill. And in fact, it's the opposite of a big infrastructure bill. It's trillions of dollars less than what is needed to be spent to bring the infrastructure just back up to code, forget doing something new. And of course, this was another promise that was, you know, the bill was passed, but it was so watered down. You see the initial piece of it there. And in terms of foreign policy, what we have seen is basically a complete continuation of what we saw during the Trump administration. And of course, there is very little change administration to administration and foreign policy in the United States historically and contemporarily. So it's not as if anyone was expecting major change, but even in small areas, we have seen no change at all. Certainly when it comes to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, no change at all in the U.S. total support for that. No change at all for the U.S. embassy in which was moved to Jerusalem in a provocative move. No change at all. The attempt to completely encircle and strangle China and isolate China in a new Cold War type scenario, despite rhetoric that there is no new Cold War, they put billions and billions of dollars to put more bases and more weapons ringing around China. The expansion of regime change operations inside of the Horn of Africa. The attacks on governments all across the African continent by removing preferential access to U.S. markets based on them not having the right foreign policy views. So in so far as the United States believes it, the continuation of the intense strangle of the blockade on Cuba, which was intensified by Trump, that's been continued by Biden, the same thing in Venezuela. So we're actually seeing pretty much across the board, domestically, the things Biden said he was going to do, the things that were popular that he said he was going to do, many of the core elements of what the Democratic Party constituency thinks should happen, just did not happen, despite a majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress. We've seen on foreign policy that there's been basically no change. And so quite frankly, and especially when you look at the COVID situation, where Biden has essentially abdicated his responsibility despite campaigning on the fact he was going to get COVID under control, that there's been little to no change, and that most of the things that have happened have been ad hoc. Many of them have only happened because of aggressive push back against his lack of willingness to do them. And I think that we have to really look at the first year as really a year of inertia at best. A key plank of Joe Biden's campaign was his claim to be a bipartisan leader. Throughout the campaign, he portrayed himself as someone who could reach across the aisle and work with the opposition. A year later, this claim has been thoroughly discredited. The Republicans have refused to back any of Biden's key initiatives, and he has failed to even win the support of sections of the Democratic Party. How does Biden's promise of bipartisanship look today? I think Biden's promise of bipartisanship has, you know, I mean, honestly, quite frankly, he's been totally embarrassed. I mean, you know, he campaigned and has always held himself out to be such a great dealmaker, such a great friend of so many Republicans. He was always touting, you know, this or that segregationist he was friendly with this or that right wing Republican he was friendly with. And he certainly does have a history of striking deals that benefit the right wing at the expense of the mass of people of the United States. But his sort of, you know, vaunted thing that he's going to be coming there and negotiate has totally fallen flat. Republicans have essentially just said, we're not going to do anything that you want us to do. And in the Democratic Senatorial Caucus, Biden can't even get a majority of Democrats to support the most basic democratic policies. I'm talking about things that are supported by like 90% of Democrats. And when you look at the states where the opposition is coming from, that are often supported by 50, 60, 70% of people regardless of political party, and Biden still can't get them to agree with his core agenda. That's to some degree, because they're not serving the people of their states. They're actually serving the ultra wealthy and the ultra elites of the United States of America, who certainly control the Senate and the politics. But nevertheless, it does just speak to the fact that not only were his abilities oversold, but the whole idea of bipartisanship is actually oversold and overpromised. Biden's history is not actually as a bipartisan person, quite frankly, by Biden's history is really is actually as a facilitator of the right word shift of the country, and really confirming that the Democrats were on board with a lot of right wing policies in the government. So he was not cobbling together difficult coalitions, but he was essentially confirming the general gist and the general tide of things that were going to happen anyway, and certainly without him. So I think it was always oversold. I think the idea of bipartisanship is also oversold. Many of the things that people consider to be great about America, many people were opposed to didn't always break down on party lines. But it's not as if there's ever been some, well, maybe in the 1800s, so-called era of good feeling. But there's never been really any sort of major period where this has been a major factor. But it's a lie that's told by the center, center right and the center left and the Republicans and the Democrats that, oh, well, what we really all need is to get along, that that's more important than any of the policies and any of the changes. That's what we're seeing in the conversation about the filibuster. I think it shows that Biden ultimately is a creature of the highly conservative, highly minoritarian US constitutional system that favors at best incremental change and does really it's the maximum to set up a situation where you cannot have significant change and Biden's not willing to break from that. And that's why his agenda is ultimately failing. Defenders of Biden's performance claim that the system is too skewed against the president and there is not much he could do under these circumstances. They point to the Republican obstruction in Congress as the main reason for the policy paralysis. However, was Biden really not in a position to do much this year? What could have been done differently? I do not buy this idea that structural things are holding him back primarily because he also has the ability of executive action. I mean, there is no doubt that the structure of the House and the Senate lends itself, especially the Senate to the power of minorities. There's just no doubt about that at all. Now, what I will say is Biden essentially empowered that because in the context of the Democratic primary campaign, this came up many, many times with people saying, well, how are you going to do anything if you if there's people in the Democratic Party who may not support you, which of course was something that could sort of be foreseen may take place. And Biden was always the one saying, we don't need to get rid of the filibuster. We don't need to do anything. So he didn't do anything to sort of seed the ideological ground coming in and to build the support coming in. But let's just say he did. Let's just say all that. Yes, it is possible for a handful of people to hold up quite a bit in the Senate. There's no doubt. Now, whether or not he's put all the pressure he can on them as a whole other issue, I do not think he has. But here's the bigger issue. In the context of gridlock in Congress, easily Biden could have moved on a number of executive priorities that he failed to do. The he could have actually wiped out all federal student debt. This is legal. It's well known. There's a secret memo that we everyone feels strongly does say that from the Biden administration, which is why they haven't released it. But at the very least, he could have done the $10,000. There's a range of things he could have done around, say the war on drugs in order to change how different agencies are operating, to de-schedule marijuana, to end a lot of the sort of petty drug arrest and potentially let a number of people out of prison to approach and address the issue of how the federal Bureau of Prisons is doing different things to let more people out of prison vis-a-vis different elements. We could have addressed mass incarceration more significantly there as well. I think we can see on the budget fronts. I mean, many of the things that he did, he did not have to do. So the defense budget and other pieces like that, that did pass where he was, you know, essentially just facilitating a number of terrible things that of course he could have put a marker on. I think when you look at the issue of COVID-19, you know, we have not seen an aggressive use of the Defense Production Act, which is executive power to ramp up the infrastructure surrounding trying to fight and push back against COVID-19. He has not used march-in rights to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, which could be done around COVID-19, and many other drugs to reduce the price of prescription drugs right away. There are also other agreements that could have released the patents to avoid all these variants by having more vaccines around the world. All that could have been done with executive action without a doubt. And there are many, many more things that could be done on this front that he just has failed to do quite frankly in terms of the context of what his actual powers outside of Congress are. So whatever the extent is of the gridlock in Congress, whatever you can say that he didn't do about that, there are many things that he did not do, many things that he promised to do, that he didn't need any support at all from Congress to take care of, that he has in fact not done and not pushed and not moved forward in a way that I think is significant and relevant. I mean, you know, everyone was saying, oh, for the first time ever, a Secretary of Labor went to a picket line when Marty Walsh went there. Well, why didn't Biden go? I mean, he claimed to be the most, he says he's a great union guy and unions are good for America. When striketober is happening and sweeping the country, Biden had nothing to say against these major employers. He didn't speak out. He didn't try to inspire social movements of workers coming together. So I think both from the bully pulpit perspective, from the congressional perspective and from the executive action perspective, Biden obviously could have done significantly more, but he himself does not want to. He's a relatively conservative Democrat. And as much as people say, Biden can't do XYZ, I think he's very happy, in my view, to be in a number of these conundrums, because it makes it very easy for him to say, well, I'm for it. But what can I do? It's just a structure of the thing. And I definitely feel that there's a lot of that going on and more that could be left on the table that just isn't taking place.