The Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force provides recommendations in six areas of domestic policy which are a roadmap for what Biden and his team want to accomplish if he is elected president. Despite little discussion about public policy at their convention, this is a detailed plan for domestic policy. Today we will take a look at their plans for the economy called Building a Stronger, Fairer Economy.
There are two parts of the plan: a 10-page narrative of what they want to do and then a 14-page description of their policy recommendations. A lot of it overlaps, but there are 24-pages and a lot of material. An important note: there is no statement of how much any of these proposals would cost or how they would be funded.
Here are some points of what they describe:
1. They completely redefine a self-employed individual by providing unemployment for them which we can only assume the self-employed will now have to pay into the unemployment system. They also provide sick leave. It is left to wonder if anyone self-employed want this governmental meddling.
2. They use the word ‘invest’ 11 times in 10-page narrative. They used the term “supercharged investment” once. They, of course, are addressing the fact that they will take tax dollars and direct them toward policies they support.
3. They declare housing is a right — another right they have given to Americans. They are calling for a Homeowner and Renters Bill of Rights.
4. To address the housing crisis that they say exists, they are calling for government intervention and new programs despite all the programs currently in place. Reading their narrative one is led to believe they were not in America and have no understanding there was a housing collapse in 2008 caused by the government loosened minimum requirements for home purchases.
5. They mention Black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and women as suffering due to COVID, but no mention of Asian Americans. Just a point of information.
6. They are going to solve the homelessness problem. This is the party that created the problem in cities Democrats have run for decades, allowed it to fester and then has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at the problem, but in the Biden presidency they will solve the problem. Will that involve single apartments at a cost to build of $500k each as in Los Angeles?
7. Because of the COVID crisis, they are going to start a brand new New Deal federal jobs program.
8. Social Security benefits will be increased in many areas with no new curbs or raising of the eligibility age. This can only mean higher taxes.
9. They call for reparations for Black people. No comment on that because that would take days to address.
10. They want to redesign state-run unemployment programs. This would centralize control of what has historically been a state authority, handing more power to a federal government with too many responsibilities already.
11. They want to make franchisors responsible for the labor practices of their franchisees. They have been trying to do this for years. There are hundreds of thousands of franchisees who run their own businesses. This would destroy the franchise model that has allowed millions of Americans to own and operate their own businesses.
12. The document is written with a tilt of everything toward the economy as racist and as if everyone is a union member. 6.3% of private employees are unionized so it would seem the orientation is not directed at anything other than union membership. The vice-chair of the drafting committee is the head of a union. The chair is Rep. Karen Bass who is perceived as a far Left individual.
13. They ban arbitration agreements for employee contracts thus throwing everything into expensive court litigation.
Then there are three proposals that stand out for special discussion.
They propose nationalizing the new law in California that has very much eliminated independent contractors and mandated everyone working for a company be a W-2 employee with some delineated exceptions. They refer to this as the ABC rules. It is often referred to as AB5 after the number of the bill. This has caused great turmoil for businesses in California causing many independent contractors to either close or leave.
This next one is really fascinating. They want to create a new agency within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) called the Public Credit Reporting Agency. This agency will be directly in competition with the four main credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovis. The new rules would require the federal government to get a credit report from the new in-house agency, meaning virtually every home loan would have to use the government agency destroying a large portion of the business of the privately operated agencies. This is a massive attack on free enterprise turning over more power to the government.
They want to expand their deep dive into the Federal Reserve after creating the funding source for the CFPB outside of Congress. They want a huge expansion of the Fed including them basically opening banks in competition with the thousands of banks that exist in this country to open bank accounts for people. This is obviously because they are unhappy with the fact that banks set limits on who can open a bank account to mitigate their risks they assume, that are reviewed by the federal government and limited by the feds. The fed opening bank accounts has never been done and they are not set-up for such.
In addition, they want to redefine the mandate of the Fed which currently is to contain inflation and maximize employment. Those are two very large responsibilities. That want to add to those responsibilities to aggressively target persistent racial gaps in job, wages and wealth. This is not just on paper; Mr. Biden has personally called for this reorientation of purpose. Do you think something could go wrong here with this? An independent agency that has been a stable force in our economy for well over a century will now have to desert its primary goals to help favored minority groups within the Democrat party.
This is just a taste of what they want to do, and the Wall Street Journal analysis says Biden will raise taxes $4 trillion. Of course, that will be on the rich, but somehow it always, always seeps down to the middle-classes.
We will be back to let you know what else the Biden team wants to do so you can make an educated decision of whom to vote for November 3rd.