How President Biden is trying to Trump-proof his legacy
WASHINGTON ― President Joe Biden dared his Republican successor this week to eliminate his signature law bringing clean-energy manufacturing projects across the country, including GOP-leaning states and congressional districts.
“Will the next president stop a new electric battery factory in Liberty, North Carolina, that will create thousands of jobs?” the lame-duck American leader said in a speech Tuesday at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank. “Will he shut down a new solar factory being built in Cartersville, Georgia? Are they going to do that?”
As he prepares to leave office, Biden is looking to cement a legacy of economic recovery from the COVID pandemic. And he is challenging the very people who have opposed his agenda ‒ Republican lawmakers ‒ to help preserve the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, a centerpiece of Biden’s economic agenda. The outgoing president is trying the guard the law that unleashed billions in financial incentives aimed at spurring the construction of factories that produce clean-energy products.
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It’s one of several far-reaching Biden-era laws and policies that President-elect Donald Trump has promised to unravel in his second term when Republicans gain full control of Congress in addition to the White House. Biden is betting the projects and jobs are so popular among the people benefitting that even his Republican rivals won’t kill it.
Yet behind the scenes, the Biden administration is also working to pull what levers it has left to effectively “Trump-proof” Biden’s other major accomplishments ‒ and skirt around the Republican takeover to come. It follows a tradition in Washington in which an outgoing administration typically makes last-minute policy moves before the opposing party comes in.
