Biden to sign executive orders on COVID aid, federal benefits
Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman shares what Americans can expect from President Joe Biden in his first 100 days in office.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: Of course, it has been a busy week in politics, busy week in corporate news. We're going to see the earnings pick up over the next couple of weeks. But let's stay on all the goings on in DC and bring in Yahoo Finance's senior columnist Rick Newman. Rick, for your view-- and I know we talked about this last week.
Tough time for you, you wrote about Donald Trump pretty much every day for the last four years. Now you're easing into writing about Joe Biden. And how-- in the early going, with mostly executive orders, a huge pandemic to get under control, an economy that's still faltering, how are you seeing the lay of the land for Biden as things get started here?
RICK NEWMAN: I'm not having Trump withdrawal symptoms yet. Biden's keeping us busy. Look, I mean, the stock market kind of tells the story. It's been up a lot since Biden's election. And that's because of anticipation for another relief bill, obviously. I think, you know, Biden has now signed almost 30 executive orders. And I've been reading through those and trying to figure out which are the most important.
I think that his plan to set up a federal COVID strategy is a big deal. I mean, since this whole thing blew up last March, I mean, the smartest minds have been saying, you need to throw everything the government has at this problem. President Trump did not do that. He basically shunted off a lot of it to the states and cities. And that just left kind of a mushy response. So we're going to see what Biden can actually do.
You know, when you hear ideas like-- he wants to establish a federal vaccine program, which will include some federal sites run by people staffed and financed by the government to distribute vaccines. There are going to be mobile vehicles going out to rural areas to do vaccinations. Just because he wants to do this doesn't mean it's all going to go perfectly smoothly. But at least we're throwing more resources at the problem.
JULIE HYMAN: Rick, you know, we've seen the rise of executive orders as a tool in recent years. And sometimes it's been criticized. What do you make of it here? I mean, is this a record for Joe Biden, the number of EOs he's signing?
RICK NEWMAN: I don't know. It's a good question. I haven't added them all up. This is not entirely new. President Obama relied a lot on executive orders because Republicans controlled at least one house of Congress for six of his eight years and just wouldn't act on much of his legislation. President Trump, of course, used a lot of executive orders to do things quickly and draw a lot of attention to them. He didn't have a lot of patience for the legislative process.
But of course, with Trump, we know many of those executive orders got overturned in courts. So Biden, for sure, a lot of his executive orders so far have been overturning things Trump did. So just use the logic. If Trump issued an order that actually survived a court challenge, then it stands to reason that if Obama revokes-- excuse me, Biden revokes that order, then that would probably also stand as well.
But I think Biden is being a little more careful here. He's doing things he knows that he can do as the executive. And he does have Democrats running Congress. So at the same time, he's putting-- you know, he's clearly established his legislative priorities.
He's got this relief bill already on Capitol Hill. There's an immigration bill. There's going to be an infrastructure bill following this. Just because Democrats control Congress does not mean that every single Democrat is going to vote for those bills and they're automatically going to pass. But Biden's got the wind at his back for now with a flurry of executive orders and legislation going to two friendly branches of Congress.
- Rick, as part of your your great coverage of the Trump presidency, you would grade the president each week on something you developed, the Trumpometer. How are you going to grade the Biden presidency each week? Is it the Biden Bar Chart, the Scranton Joe Dot Plot? What are you thinking about?
[LAUGHTER]
RICK NEWMAN: Well, we had two things for Trump. We had the weekly Trumpometer, which was just me having fun and giving Trump a grade for the week. We're retiring the Trumpometer because, after the first few weeks, I just don't think there's going to be that much happening in the Biden administration because he's just not as wild as Trump. Now if there-- if millions of Yahoo Finance fans demand that I roll out the Bidenometer, I will happily do it.
But meanwhile, I am continuing a thing, which is different, called-- which was called the Trumponomics Report Card. It will now be the Bidenomics Report Card. And that's based on data. It's got a methodology. And Moody's analytics gives us the data. And on a monthly basis, we're going to say how how the economy is doing under Biden compared with-- I guess it's going to be eight prior presidents now, because we'll include President Trump. So Biden will be getting a monthly letter grade ranging from A to F. He's probably going to start around C plus or B minus. And let's hope for everybody's sake that gets better over time.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, that was the strategy that-- it worked out for me going from high school to college. Set the bar low, kind of kept it in the B, B-minus range. So when the B-pluses, A-minuses rolled in, it was like, oh, my god, you're a genius now.
RICK NEWMAN: Are you still sticking with that strategy, Myles, set the bar low?
MYLES UDLAND: Absolute--
[LAUGHTER]
Everyone who works with me know that I like to undersell, come in kind of low energy. And then if anything better than that happens, it's like, wow, look, he's really on today. So that's a strategy that--
RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, under-promise, over-deliver.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, it has at least worked so far in my extensive eight years in the working world. So we'll see.
RICK NEWMAN: I'll say, personally, I expect very little from you and you always exceed expectations.
[LAUGHTER]
MYLES UDLAND: Look, I mean, corporate America teaches us on these quarterly earnings calls four times a year that the entire point of life is to set the bar low and thus exceed expectations. There's actually a famous Charlie Munger quote about how this leads to a good marriage. But being three months into mine, I won't opine too much on the success keys there.
RICK NEWMAN: Myles, you are exceeding my expectations at this very second.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I sure am. All right--
