While President-elect Trump has seized the reins of power early and is already carrying out presidential duties, according to lawmakers of both parties, Joe Biden has remained unremarkable.
In addition to authorizing events on Capitol Hill, President Trump made international headlines by threatening to take back control of the Panama Canal and declaring that U.S. “ownership and control of Greenland is absolutely necessary.” are.
“It's clear he's in charge now,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said as Washington was hours away from a possible government shutdown. I described the influence it had on the discussion.
“Nobody’s talking about, ‘Where’s Biden?’” None of this. “Mr. Trump is in charge,” and added, “Even without certification of election, Mr. Trump is in charge now.”
As they scramble to cobble together a last-minute deal to avoid a government shutdown, some lawmakers said they sometimes feel like Trump, not Biden, is holding the veto pen.
“I've heard people criticize President Trump for intervening too quickly. I think the important point is that Biden left the void and Trump filled the void,” said one Republican strategist. Bin Weber said.
Weber said Trump “gained a lot” in the spending fight by forcing Republicans to remove more than 1,300 pages from the original deal.
“The fact that the current president of the United States has had little influence on the United States speaks specifically to the influence that presidents have: [chambers] Congress under his control, or under his party. “It was quite something to see,” he said.
Trump's team declared victory after Congressional negotiators cut the original 1,547-page funding bill to 116 pages. The final package included disaster relief and economic aid for farmers, Republicans' top demands, but omitted many of Democratic priorities.
“Without President Trump, the American people would be stuck with a 1,500-page bill full of Democratic pork and pay increases for members of Congress.As president-elect, President Trump will have more power than incumbent President Joe Biden in this Congress.” The lame-duck era has been under even more scrutiny than the rest of the rudderless presidential term,” said Caroline Leavitt, Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman. Ta. team.
Biden, on the other hand, had little involvement in the food fight in Congress.
He did not speak directly to congressional leaders about the impending shutdown until Friday morning, but senior officials have been in contact with Democratic lawmakers throughout the week.
Stephen S. Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said President Trump is setting a new standard by being very assertive in the weeks before the inauguration.
“Trump's involvement is unprecedented,” he said, noting that Trump's sudden opposition to the spending deal, encouraged by his chief of staff Elon Musk, surprised Republican leaders.
Smith said Biden likely decided that publicly engaging in last week's spending fight in Congress would not help resolve the impasse.
“There's no question that he was carefully advised about what was going on. Certainly, if he were to engage publicly, it would be in the form of criticizing the Republican Party in some way, but “The idea must have been that it would only make it more difficult for Senate Democrats to get some concessions from House Republicans,” he said.
But Republican lawmakers have voiced frustration with Biden's low-key approach to the government shutdown.
“I don't know where he is,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said of Biden's low-profile role in the fight over government funding and the debt limit.
Mr. Tillis said Mr. Trump has “become more presidential in the last month than President Biden has been.”
“I don't think there's a lot of leadership coming from the White House. We're getting more White House leadership from Mar-a-Lago than we're getting from the White House,” he argued.
“He checked out a long time ago,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of Biden.
Democrats said Biden received little attention from his caucus when President Trump overturned the 1,547-page bipartisan continuing resolution.
Biden allies say there was no need for him to intervene to distract from the Republican-on-Republican fight over the debt ceiling.
But some Democrats thought the president could have been more vocal about the popular bipartisan proposal that succeeded in stripping Trump of his stopgap spending measures.
The package included several Democratic priorities, including extending Medicare telehealth flexibility, reauthorizing legislation to prevent the pandemic and combat opioid addiction, and paying for community health centers.
“I think they're out of energy,” a Democratic senator who requested anonymity said of Biden.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Hill on Friday afternoon that he has “not heard anything directly from the White House,” but is not aware of any leadership-level conversations. he admitted.
Just as the Wall Street Journal released a report detailing how White House aides responded “to the needs of a fading leader” during Biden's tenure, lawmakers said they would He had doubts about Biden's role in the negotiations.
Biden first spoke directly Friday morning to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York about President Trump's request for a stopgap spending bill.
After President Trump voiced opposition to the funding deal announced by lawmakers on Tuesday night and demanded that they instead pass a clear stopgap measure combined with legislation that would extend the debt ceiling beyond 2025, Congress It came within hours of a government shutdown.
Mr. Biden did not respond directly to those demands, leaving it to Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries to defeat Mr. Trump's debt limit demands.
But senior administration officials have been in contact with Democratic lawmakers throughout the week, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement on Wednesday, warning Republicans of the bipartisan funding agreement. He urged them to stop pretending.
“President Biden and his team are working with Leader Jeffries and Leader Schumer to exploit the mistakes of the Republican Party against them and show that House Republicans and President Trump are breaking their promises and giving tax cuts to the military and the wealthy. “We have ensured that the American people know that all Social Security recipients are at the behest of the richest man in the world,” White House Chief Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said.
The White House through Mr. BatesHe took credit for rejecting Republican President Trump's calls to shut down the government unless Democrats agree to a long-term extension of the debt ceiling.
“Our strategy is to stop the Republican-induced Christmas shutdown while ensuring that the incoming majority and administration immediately sells out working families, including those with cancer, to connected billionaire donors. ,” he said, referring to Musk's remarks. Involvement in spending disputes.
Biden's allies have also pushed back against criticism, citing his accomplishments.
Democrats claimed a major victory Friday after the Senate approved Biden's 235th judicial nominee, surpassing the 234 judges confirmed during Trump's first term.
Mr. Biden also commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates on Monday, once again making the front page.
White House officials pointed to a historic visit to Angola earlier this month and that total private sector investment in clean energy, semiconductors and other advanced manufacturing reached $1 trillion in November.
Still, Mr. Biden's approach to the final weeks of his term stands in sharp contrast to the way Mr. Trump has dominated media attention in recent weeks since his election victory.
President Trump made bombshell statements over the weekend, including declaring he would consider regaining control of the Panama Canal, which he called a “vital national asset,” and vowing to rename Denali, the nation's highest mountain, Mount McKinley. I put up a headline.
He concluded Sunday by posting on Truth Social that the United States' “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute must.”
Political experts and strategists say Trump's vocal stance on a variety of issues is unusual compared to past presidential transitions.
Smith, a political scientist at the University of Washington, called Trump's loud foreign policy declarations during the transition period “unusual.”
Signs of his influence were visible north of the border.
President Trump's threat to impose high tariffs on Canada, one of America's closest allies, has weakened Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and left Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland divided over how to respond. He suddenly resigned due to differences.
