By Lee H. Hamilton
There’s not much question where the Biden administration’s domestic priorities lie. Getting the pandemic health crisis under control and moving past its attendant economic crisis were always going to be the first order of business for the new White House. It’s what comes afterward that will give us a sense of whether the country is ready for the kind of change Biden is signaling he wants to bring.
To be sure, some of that change has just been enacted into law. The stimulus package that made it through Congress a few weeks ago was an abrupt shift in tone from Washington. Rather than enshrine limited government, the stimulus bill takes the attitude that forceful government action is needed in this moment and that the way to prosperity lies in helping poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans.
I suspect that a lot of Americans won’t care much about the ideology behind the stimulus bill. They’ll just judge it on whether it works, and in particular on whether the economy recovers and produces jobs. Right on its heels, though, will come a host of issues that test both the administration and Congress.
One of them has already begun making headlines, as young migrants and migrant families show up in rising numbers at the southern border and federal officials scramble to shelter and process them. My sense is that many Americans would welcome a reasoned and humane approach to immigration—but not if it produces chaos. And just as Republicans on Capitol Hill are seizing on events at the border to raise the heat on immigration reform efforts, so the other big item on the administration’s agenda—infrastructure—may also fall prey to intense partisanship.
Beyond that, of course, any number of exceedingly complex issues await action. There’s pressure to raise the minimum wage, policing reform, climate change, a set of issues around racial equity, and any number of hot-button cultural issues.
But what may be the biggest test of all has less to do with policy priorities than with whether Washington can move forward on challenges that matter to the American people. We have had many years now of Washington, collectively, struggling to advance on issues of importance to the day-to-day lives of Americans. Our political leaders have a chance to reset our expectations of what they can accomplish. Here’s hoping they take the opportunity to do so.
Lee Hamilton is a Senior Advisor for the Indiana University Center on Representative Government; a Distinguished Scholar at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies; and a Professor of Practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.
