Editor's note: In advance of the Nevada caucuses, the Las Vegas Sun editorial board invited the top Democratic candidates for interviews about how their policies would shape America and Nevada. This is the first in a series of stories based on our conversations.
In describing himself as the candidate best suited to return the nation to normalcy after the chaos of Donald Trump, Joe Biden stresses that he’s not simply talking about what will happen in the White House.
“One of the arguments I’m making is, it’s not just who has the best chance of beating Trump, it’s who has the best chance of increasing the number of Democrats in the Senate to get to 51,” Biden said.
Biden, naturally, says he’s that person. As the centrist and highly recognized establishment candidate, he believes he’ll bring a broad swath of voters to the polls who will also support Democrats down the ballot.
That remains to be seen, but what’s clear is that Biden has used his longstanding connections with the party’s power structure to assemble a seasoned policy team that understands the issues and offers one of the most thorough and coherent sets of plans in the field.
As demonstrated in his position papers, each part of his platform builds on the other, with none operating in a vacuum. The complete package reflects an understanding of a core need of governance: Everything fits together and offers a vision for the future.
Immigration
Biden has been criticized over the high number of deportations carried out while he and President Barack Obama were in office, so it’s perhaps no surprise that immigration is a keystone of his platform and that his policies are by far the most carefully thought out and appropriate of any candidate.
A case in point is Biden’s understanding of the role of foreign aid and assistance in stemming migration to the U.S.-Mexico border. While he and other candidates see the need for assistance to Central America’s Northern Triangle countries to stem the flow of migrants from those countries, Biden speaks in depth about the importance of also addressing issues that are driving out-migration from Mexico.
“I spent a lot of time in Mexico (as vice president), and what we focused on was helping them deal with their internal corruption problem like we did with Colombia. Secondly, I put together a bipartisan plan for $750 million to change the circumstances that exist in Guatemala and El Salvador. It was working. It had started to work.”
But then came Trump, who initially eliminated the aid package altogether but then offered $500 million.
Now, Biden says, what’s needed is $1 billion per year in aid along with a strong reconnection between the Mexican government and the presidential administration.
“I would assign a State Department person, an aid person, to be directly responsible for day-to-day relations. And I’d personally engage the president of Mexico in dealing with the transition,” Biden said. “Another thing that’s happening is what we’re not doing with regard to Venezuela. We should be organizing the hemisphere.”
Elsewhere in his immigration reforms, Biden would:
• Provide a roadway to citizenship for 11 million long-term undocumented immigrants.
• Reverse Trump’s extremist policies on immigration, including family separations at the border and restrictions on access for asylum seekers.
• Adapt the visa program to benefit key industries based on input from companies about their employment needs.
• Create a new visa category for cities and counties to petition for higher levels of immigration to address workforce shortages. Biden said the plan would include a requirement for organizations to prove they had tried and failed to fill positions with current citizens. “I was in charge of the H-1B visa program and chair of the Judiciary Committee for years, and one of the things I found that a lot of Silicon Valley companies did was to say they couldn’t find folks here who were qualified to fill their jobs. But in fact, they weren’t doing due diligence,” Biden said. “But in fact, they weren’t. So (the plan) requires that due diligence.”
• Reform the visa program for highly skilled workers to ensure it doesn’t undermine wages of domestic worker
Climate change
Biden calls for a $1.7 trillion investment over 10 years to address global warming and says the initiative will create 10 million new jobs. The investments heavily skew toward new industrial efforts and represent closely tying the Green New Deal to economic development through expansion of renewable energy technology, electric vehicles, support infrastructure, etc.
His plan also connects to his infrastructure and transportation policies, in which he places a strong focus on passenger intercity rail and intracity light-rail systems to reduce the use of private vehicles and therefore cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
Infrastructure
Unlike other candidates’ plans on this subject, Biden’s $1.3 trillion infrastructure investment over 10 years represents a clear effort to reimagine and improve America, rather than just rebuilding old infrastructure. It includes funding for battery and energy storage technology, for freight shipping on rail and waterways, for energy research and more.
On rail, Biden is passionate about developing high-speed rail lines in major corridors and providing funding for light-rail.
“More people get on and off an Amtrak train than get on every single flight in every single airport from Maine to Florida within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean,” Biden said. “If you were to eliminate the Amtrak rail from Washington ot New York, you’d have to build seven new lanes on Interstate 95 to accommodate the traffic, which costs $20 million a linear mile for one of these lanes. It costs a fraction of that to build a rail system.”
As for light rail, Biden said: “If you look at what’s going on in cities, you find out that most of the jobs now for our workers who live there are actually in the suburbs. And somewhere between 40% and 70% of citizens in the cities don’t have vehicles that can get them to work. So light rail can fundamentally alter that in terms of access to jobs and increasing productivity in the cities.”
Health care
Biden falls with other party moderates in not calling for an end to private insurance. His plan instead relies on key elements of the Affordable Care Act, such as expanded Medicare and government subsidies for coverage. Broadly speaking, he’s focusing on expanding the successful model of Obamacare and reversing Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. health care.
Gun safety
Biden touts himself as the only candidate who has “beaten the NRA twice nationally,” and cites his role in passing the Brady Bill and the Clinton-era assault weapons ban. His gun safety policy goes farther than some of his colleagues’ in that he supports development of biometrics technology that prevents weapons from being fired by anyone other than the owner, and says he would work to overturn a federal law protecting gun manufacturers from liability over the use of their products.
“They’re the only (industry) in America exempt from being sued,” he said. “The only one. Imagine if that were the case with drug companies now. We’d still have 9 billion opioids being sold without warnings.”
In conclusion
Biden has surrounded himself with smart, experienced and capable people from his party’s brain trust, which positions the country to benefit from solid leadership and a return to stability if he is elected president. In contrast to the Trump White House and its ever-changing cast of incompetent characters, Biden could be counted on to fill his Cabinet with people who know what they’re doing: Instead of wishing for more adults in the room, Americans would have a room full of them.