Trump’s Record & Where Biden Stands on Those Issues

By TJH Staff

No longer do presidential campaigns involve much talk about records, plan,s and proposals. They have pretty much become personality food fights, with voters being asked to decide who they like more. Love him or hate him (after all, isn’t that what this election is all about?), the following is a discussion of President Trump’s record on several key issues and where Joe Biden stands on those issues.

ECONOMY

Any non-economist who dives into economic data will quickly feel their eyes glaze over – “Why can’t it be a yes or no question? Is the economy good or not?” The answer is that there are countless data points to answer that question, and oftentimes it is a matter of perspective that determines how the question is answered. Add the devastating impact of Covid-19 and the question becomes similar to “What do you think of the cook’s cholent recipe…and try not to consider the dead cat that landed in it.”

President Trump’s economic plan over the past four years involved around a three-pronged approach: tax cuts, deregulation, and upending trade policy. He did all three of those things. In 2017, Trump delivered a tax cut which cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and lowered individual tax rates. On the deregulation front, the Trump administration cut eight-and-a-half regulations for every new rule and slashed regulatory costs by nearly $50 billion to-date. On the trade front, one of Trump’s first actions was withdrawing from the TPP, which was a 12-nation trade deal that the Obama administration agreed to participate in. He also renegotiated NAFTA, which is the U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada. Most significantly, he placed tariffs on China imports, resulting in a trade deal with China which, in the first phase included a Chinese commitment to purchase an additional $200 billion in American goods by the end of 2021.

So how did the Trump economic plan go?

According to the Economist, from 2017 to 2019, the U.S. economy “performed marginally better than expected.” Gross domestic product (GDP), which is the most common yardstick of the economy, grew somewhat faster in 2017-19 than it was in either Barack Obama’s first or second term. GDP growth reached 3.1 percent in early 2019. Household income soared during Trump’s first three years in office, reaching a record $68,703 in 2019, an increase of $5,805 from 2016 after adjusting for inflation. On the unemployment front, unemployment fell to 3.5 percent in 2019, the lowest in half a century.

Then the bottom fell out.

When Covid-19 came ashore from China in early 2020, 22 million jobs evaporated in a matter of weeks. Pandemic lockdowns resulted in an unprecedented 32.9% annualized drop in real GDP in the second quarter of 2020.

The outlook looked dim.

Emergency measures were taken. Trump signed four bills designed to offer relief to the American economy, injecting more than $2.5 trillion into the economy, some by the way of stimulus directly to families, some by way of funds to prop up struggling businesses.

In July 2020, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the unemployment rate in December would be 10.5 percent. However, in the past five months, 52 percent of the job losses from the pandemic have been recovered, and the United States has gained more than 11.4 million jobs resulting in a current unemployment rate of 7.9 percent.

So what are the candidates promising for the future of the economy?

When it comes to taxes, Trump is promising a second-term middle-class tax cut, thus stimulating further growth. Biden wants to raise the top income tax rate back to 39.6% from 37% and the corporate income tax rate to 28% from 21%, providing the federal government with more tax dollars to distribute to lower income earners.

America’s economy is becoming more entangled with China, which is now the globe’s second largest economy behind the U.S. and is gunning for the number one slot. After Trump’s efforts to right the ship, for the first time in six years, in 2019, the trade deficit with China fell to $616.8 billion. Trump has promised to continue his hawkish measures by increasing pressure on China with the threat of tariffs.

Biden sees China as less of an economic threat. In May 2019, Biden said China was “not competition for us,” since it had domestic problems to deal with. He is promising to take a radically different approach than Trump; he says that he will change the economic dynamic with China by forming a coalition with allies and partners, not through unilateral tariffs.

“We’re currently witnessing the fastest labor market recovery from an economic crisis in history. Next year will be the greatest economic year in the history our country, I project.” - President Trump “The depth of economic devastation our nation is experiencing is not an act of G-d. It’s a failure of presidential leadership.” - Joe Biden

ISRAEL

In the waning days of the Obama presidency in 2016, diplomatic clouds darkened over Israel. In what Vox – a generally pro-Obama news outlet – called Obama’s “parting shot at Israel,” the United States abstained on a controversial UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, allowing it to pass easily. This vote, coupled with the BDS movement gaining momentum, appeared to be a winning strategy to strike at the engine that drives Israel’s success – its economy.

Then Trump took office, and everything changed.

Trump appointed South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, who proclaimed that “there is a new sheriff in town” and that “the days of Israel bashing are over.” Ambassador Haley, directed by the Trump administration, repeatedly defended Israel, to the great dismay of the shellshocked international body which was getting used to America’s ambivalence towards Israel, at best. After her first Security Council meeting, Haley declared, “The Security Council is supposed to discuss how to maintain international peace and security. But at our meeting on the Middle East, the discussion was not about Hezbollah’s illegal build-up of rockets in Lebanon. It was not about the money and weapons Iran provides to terrorists. It was not about how we defeat ISIS. It was not about how we hold [Syrian President] Bashar Assad accountable for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of civilians. No, instead, the meeting focused on criticizing Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East.”

Trump’s first foreign trip included a visit to Israel. Although he met with Palestinian officials during that trip, news reports quickly surfaced that Trump blasted the Palestinian leadership for paying the families of terrorists. Later, Trump acted on his chastisement – in 2018, Trump signed into law the Taylor Force Act, which halted U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority until Palestinian terrorists and their families cease to be paid.

In 2017, Trump did what many presidents promised but never did. He announced that he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. At the time, many on the left believed that the move would usher in an era of war, death, and destruction in the Middle East. Despite the naysayers, in 2018, Trump fulfilled his promise. The predictions of doom and gloom fell flat.

In fact, in the four years of Trump’s presidency, Israel’s position on the world stage turned around 180 degrees.

Perhaps the biggest driver of that turnaround was President Trump’s decision in May 2018 to terminate the United States’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and the re-imposition of sanctions lifted under the deal. Rather than bolster Iran and give it a seat on the world stage, the Trump administration highlighted Iran’s indiscretion in the region and caused its enemies to coalesce around the common cause of weakening the evil regime. Among Iran’s enemies in the region are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Oh, and Israel, of course. Whereas in the past the countries in the region found their common cause to be sympathy for the Palestinians, now those countries found their common cause to be the Iranian problem. On that front, Israel was a worthy ally. Over the ensuing years, Israel has carried out numerous missions in Iran, undoubtedly with the cooperation of numerous Arab countries who had, in the past, called for Israel’s destruction.

The culmination of this diplomatic shift took place over the last three months with the Trump administration brokering normalization of relationships and peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and, most recently, Sudan. At the end of August, during the maiden flight between Israel and the UAE, El Al flew directly over Saudi Arabia, signaling that peace with one of the region’s most important Muslim countries may be on the horizon.

Joe Biden has long considered himself an ally of Israel. However, during his time as Obama’s vice president, he, at times, embraced the role of pitbull when it came to Israel.

In 2010, a diplomatic spat took place when then-Vice President Joe Biden snubbed Prime Minister Netanyahu while in Israel by arriving 90 minutes late to a scheduled dinner in order to object to a bureaucratic announcement that took place while Biden was in Israel about Israeli government approval of 1,600 new homes in east Jerusalem.

In April 2016, shortly after a terrorist attack in Israel, Biden said, “I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years – the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures – they’re moving us, and, more importantly, they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction.”

However, trying to read the tea leaves based on statements and optics is fraught with uncertainty. What is certain is that the Democratic Party under Obama, and more recently with the rise of the radical-left, is increasingly cold towards Israel. Whether Biden will continue that trend is anyone’s guess, as he has not addressed his Middle East policy beyond the standard political platitudes.

When it comes to the Iran deal, though, Biden has signaled that he would rejoin the accords. He told the Council for Foreign Relationships, “If Iran moves back into compliance with its nuclear obligations, I would re-enter the JCPOA as a starting point to work alongside our allies in Europe and other world powers to extend the deal’s nuclear constraints.” That would certainly negatively impact Israel and may undo some of the alliances that Israel has forged under the Trump administration.

“The State of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace. This is, for many, many years they’ve been at odds, to put it nicely, and to normalize their relations. This will be the third country where we’re doing this. And we have many, many more coming. We have — they’re coming at us hot and heavy. In the coming weeks, they will meet to negotiate cooperation agreements.” – President Trump announcing the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel last week

“There’s no solution for Israel other than a two-state solution. It doesn’t exist. It’s not possible.” – Joe Biden, PBS Newshour, December 2019

JUDGES

It is the third-branch of government, the judiciary, where a lot of the action takes place in government outside the view of the news headlines – usually.

To date, President Trump has appointed 218 judges to the federal judiciary, including 53 on the U.S. appeals courts. When Trump took office, 42% of judges were appointed by Republicans; now more than half are Republican-appointed. Although there is no way to control jurists – who have life-time appointments – from becoming activist judges, it is more common for Republican jurists to be constitutionalists, who believe that the role of judges is not to make the law but to determine whether the given law is constitutional.

Most importantly, Trump has appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, the most recent being Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was sworn in this week to replace the seat held by late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If Justice Roberts can still be considered a conservative, Trump’s appointees have swung the highest court in the land to a 6-3 conservative majority.

Whoever wins this race on November 3 will likely get to appoint at least one justice, perhaps more. Justice Stephen Breyer is 82 years old; Justice Thomas is 72 years old; and Justice Alito is 70 years old.

More importantly, though, Democrats who are upset about Trump’s three appointments are threatening to pack the Supreme Court and add seats to the Supreme Court. By doing so, they can place any number of liberal judges on the court, erasing the conservative majority. Presumably, if that happens, when the Republicans regain power, they would engage in the same chicanery, thus making the Supreme Court just another arm of whichever party is in control of the presidency and Congress – a dangerous precedent.

Joe Biden has refused to say whether he is in support of packing the courts. When asked the question, he refused to answer and declared, “[Voters will] know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over.” After being pressured to answer the question, he deflected and said that he will likely appoint a commission to consider what to do with the Court.

“I want to every American child watching to understand that this is a very special and important ceremony. We are fulfilling the duty that passes to each new generation to sustained the national traditions and virtues that make possible everything we have achieved before that we will do tomorrow. Because of our Constitution and our culture of freedom, you live in a land where anything is possible and where any dream can come true. No matter who you are, no matter your background, in America everyone is entitled to equal protection under our laws, and your sacred rights can never, ever be taken away.”– President Trump on October 26, 2020, at the swearing-in ceremony of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

“[Voters will] know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over.”- Joe Biden, when asked if he favors adding justices to the Supreme Court

HEALTHCARE

Healthcare has long been the big pink elephant that nobody knows what to do with. In 2010, President Obama instituted what has become known as Obamacare. Then-President Obama promised countless times, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” It turned out that millions of Americans were forced to change doctors due to Obamacare. Even more of a failure, Obama promised that, due to Obamacare, the average American family would save $2,500 a year on healthcare. That did not happen, and healthcare costs continued to rise. Additionally, Obamacare caused Medicaid enrollment to explode; Medicaid, though, has an over-40% denial of treatment rate.

When he took office, President Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. He came within one vote of doing that in 2017, when the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) voted it down, seemingly out of a personal vendetta against Trump. Since that time, Trump has not put forth a comprehensive healthcare overhaul. He has signed several executive orders in an effort to lower prescription costs, though. He also repealed the Obamacare “individual mandate,” which forced people to buy expensive insurance and taxed those who couldn’t afford it.

Trump has repeatedly vowed that, should he get a second term, he will come up with a comprehensive healthcare plan. However, to-date, he has failed to lay out what that plan would look like. Although healthcare is a hot-button issue, Trump pointed out in both debates that the premise that healthcare is broken may not be fully accurate. After all, over 160 million Americans get their healthcare through their employers and are happy with that coverage.

Biden has promised that Obamacare will become “Bidencare,” referring to his vision for an expanded Affordable Care Act that includes a public option for insurance.

“What I would like to do is a much better health care, much better. We’ll always protect people with pre-existing… so I’d like to terminate Obamacare, come up with a brand new beautiful health care.” -President Trump, at the second presidential debate

“What I’m going to do is pass Obamacare with a public option, become Bidencare.”- Joe Biden, at the second presidential debate

That legislation eliminated the “three strikes” life sentencing provision for some offenses and expanded judges’ discretion in sentencing of non-violent crimes. The legislation allowed thousands of inmates to earn early release from prison.

Trump famously pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, a black woman who previously received a life sentence for her role in a cocaine trafficking ring, and later pardoned her.

Trump opposes cashless bail for people charged with certain crimes to pay bail or remain locked up until their trial. Trump has also signed an executive order that increased government grants for police departments that implement reform. Although “Build a Wall” started out as a fun rally chant, it quickly became a campaign promise etched in stone. In his four years as president, Trump partially delivered on the promise of a “new beautiful big wall.” To-date, the Trump administration, despite numerous roadblocks, has built 400 miles of wall. Although that is a fraction of the 2,000 miles of border between the U.S. and Mexico, the areas where the wall has been put up reflects the most heavily trafficked areas of the border.

The Trump administration has also issued more than 400 executive actions that dramatically reshaped America’s immigration system. Perhaps the most important change at the border has been the end of “catch and release,” which is the process in which the federal government must release migrant families apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border into the interior of the United States to begin the process of seeking asylum, hoping that they return on their own to complete the asylum process rather than disappear into the U.S. Now, when migrants are caught at the border, they are apprehended and not released into the country.

Trump’s border policies appear to have achieved the intended goal. In 2016, the Census Bureau estimated that, over the next two years, 1.4 million immigrants would pour through the border. However, in actuality, only 400,000 certain training regarding use of force and established a database that will track acts of police misconduct.

On a more personal front, Trump, in 2017, pardoned Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin who was given an outrageous sentence after a sham trial presided over by a judge who was clearly biased against him.

On the campaign trail, Joe Biden has said all of the right things about criminal justice reform, but Trump has repeatedly pointed out that Biden was one of the architects of the 1994 Crime Bill which placed tens of thousands of young

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

In 2018, President Trump signed the groundbreaking First Step Act into law.

black men – who Biden called “super-predators” – in prison for minor crimes.

“Nobody has done more for the black community than

Donald Trump. And if you look, with the exception of

Abraham Lincoln – possible exception, but the exception of Abraham Lincoln – nobody has done what I’ve done.

Criminal justice reform – Obama and Joe didn’t do it.

I don’t even think they tried.”- President Trump at the second debate

“The fact of the matter is there is institutional racism in America. And we have always said we’ve never lived up to it. Do we hold these truths to be sovereign: are all men and women are created equal? Guess what – we have never ever lived up to it.”- Joe Biden, when asked about

IMMIGRATION

In 2016, one of the cornerstones of the Trump candidacy was immigration

criminal justice reform at the second presidential debate did. 2019 marked the second time since the Great Recession that two years had passed consecutively with no increase in the U.S. immigrant population.

Trump’s early-2017 ban on travel from six Middle Eastern countries also resulted in refugees admitted from countries such as Iraq, Somalia, Iran and Syria to fall to almost zero.

Trump tried to end the Obama-sanctioned program known as DACA, which allowed 700,000 unauthorized immigrants known as “DREAMers” to live in the U.S. without threat of deportation. However, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could not end the program.

President Trump favors a “merit based” immigration system. Under the system, most of the current categories of family-sponsored immigrant visas would be eliminated, and the system would place those with desirable labor-market attributes first in line. Furthermore, President Trump does not favor giving citizenship to the estimated eleven million illegals currently in the country.

Biden’s immigration plan is diametrically opposed to Trump’s policies, perhaps more so than on any other issue. Biden has promised to reverse nearly every one of Trump’s immigration policies. Most strikingly, he has vowed to send legislation to Congress that would offer a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegals currently in the country.

“We now have a stronger border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand-new wall, you see the numbers, and we let people in, but they have to come in legally.” – President Trump, at the second presidential debate

“And the fact is, and I’ve made it very clear, within 100 days, I’m going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people.”- Joe Biden, at the second presidential debate

COVID-19

There is probably not one head of state whose political standing has not been upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Once the crisis is over, the next hundred years will likely be spent trying to figure out what happened, who did what right, who did what wrong, amongst a myriad of other questions. Perhaps one of the questions that will be asked is: “How did China get away with unleashing this deadly virus on the world, without facing the utmost consequences?”

How one sees President Trump’s response to the virus likely depends on the political-hue of the glasses worn by the observer. To Trump supporters, his decision to ban travel from China at the end of January – when National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci told him not to do so – was a bold act of leadership that saved millions of lives.

The U.S. leads the globe in Covid-19 deaths, with 231,026 fatalities. However, the U.S. does not lead the world in deaths per population. In that category, the U.S. is fourth in the world. Additionally, one must consider the possibility that there may be tens of countries (think Russia, China, Iran) that are not accurately reporting their deaths. A death-by-population calculation must take that into account. The U.S. standing on that metric will likely change once more information is gleaned.

Ultimately, as sad as each death is, the amount of deaths may not be a fair way to gauge President Trump’s response to Covid-19 in the first place.

Firstly, right here in New York, Gov. Cuomo’s decision to place Covid-positive patients back in nursing homes is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of 11,000 nursing home patients. That is not a decision that can be blamed on Trump. Are there thousands of other deaths across the country that can be blamed on similar decisions by local authorities? Perhaps.

Secondly, the fatality rate in the U.S. is 2.57% – that is lower than 51 other nations. This figure –which is not often spoken about – indicates that although the virus has spread widely in the U.S., the therapeutics and medical care provided is resulting in a lower chance of death from the virus than nations such as Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and other first-world nations.

Local governments generally carry the primary burden of managing their local Covid-19 outbreaks. That is not simply a function of federalism. It is also due to the fact that the pandemic affects each locale differently and thus is best dealt with on a local level. That does not absolve Trump from implementing a country-wide plan. Trump will argue that he did exactly that and that the federal government has provided each locale with the necessary medical equipment needed and that he did everything possible on a national level to prevent the spread of the disease. That claim can be debated until the cows come home.

What further complicates the ability to assess Trump’s handling of coronavirus is the fact that we are in the midst of the pandemic and don’t know how it will end. Trying to grade Trump or any other leader’s response at this point would be akin to judging a firefighter in the middle of a blaze.

At the start of the pandemic, Trump implemented Operation Warp Speed, which is an ambitious plan to create, produce, and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines by January 2021. If that is successful and the U.S. is able to vaccinate millions from Covid-19 while the rest of the world still struggles with the pandemic, how will Trump be seen then? Will his reluctance to embrace masks as “the solution” even be remembered or will he be seen as a great visionary and savior?

The key difference between how Trump is handling the pandemic and how Biden would handle it, based on Biden’s statements, is that Biden would be keener to institute lockdowns. Trump is generally opposed to lockdowns, although he has recognized that it is an issue to be decided by the individual states. Whereas Trump has criticized certain states for their extensive lockdowns – some of these very states have experienced the highest death tolls despite their lockdowns – Biden has expressed support for the lockdowns taking place in those states.

Biden has also expressed a willingness to implement a national mask mandate. However, despite masks quickly becoming a lightning rod issue, with many advocating for their usage, some are suspicious that masks are not the savior that they are purported to be. In the early days of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci himself dismissed masks. To the extent he changed his tune on that, some argue that it is simply a political calculation, as his understanding of viruses and their contagions spans decades before the latest incarnation of the coronavirus.

Much like its devastating health and economic effects, it is hard to make headsor-tails of the political fallout of Covid-19. It is a tale that will have to be told at a much later time, when we are way past the crisis.

“We have a vaccine that’s coming. It’s ready. It’s going to be announced within weeks. And it’s going to be delivered. We have Operation Warp Speed, which is the military is going to distribute the vaccine.”- President Trump at the second presidential debate

“What I would do is make sure we have everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time. I would make sure we move into the direction of rapid testing, investing in rapid testing. I would make sure that we set up national standards as to how to open up schools and open up businesses so they can be safe and give them the wherewithal, the financial resources to be able to do that.”- Joe Biden at the second presidential debate

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