The ace up President Biden’s sleeve

| 6:00 pm EST December 29, 2020
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We’re not quite there yet, but media outlets are coming around to begin coverage of what the first hundred days of a Biden presidency will look like. There have been the announcements of his cabinet picks which are a good indication of things to come – finally, people in charge of their respective departments who don’t plan to abolish those departments, and who bring a few years of wisdom and experience to the table. Unfortunately, Biden is going to need Democrats to control the Senate in order to confirm all of them, but there are a few actions he can take immediately without the authorization of Congress and on Monday, he revealed a big step he’ll take as president to reverse much of Donald Trump’s damage: invoking the Defense Production Act.

The law, which gives the president wide authority to direct industrial production of goods in the interest of national defense, was one that Trump was repeatedly asked to enact during the worst days of the COVID pandemic, when there was a desperate need for protective medical gear. Trump floated the idea of enacting DPA again when the Pfizer vaccine was first announced. His failure to order more doses beyond June 2021 could have catastrophic consequences for the near future – despite Republican efforts to rationalize even this.

Fortunately, we’re about to have a president who takes the pandemic seriously and by enacting the law at the beginning of his presidency, Biden will allow Pfizer access to nine different specialized products it needs to make doses of the vaccine – a key move that could allow America to recover more rapidly than what the experts are predicting.