Echoing the last Democratic president’s approach, today’s Democratic presidential candidates signal their willingness to bypass Congress to get what they want. Emily Larsen of the Washington Examiner reports.
If a Democrat is elected president in 2020, there is a good chance he or she will face a Republican-controlled Senate that will block the boldest policy proposals, such as Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax or Bernie Sanders’ plan to create a single-payer “Medicare for all” healthcare system, from taking shape.
But Democratic presidential hopefuls have plenty of ideas on how to achieve their policy goals without congressional approval.
“There’s a lot that a president of the United States — oh, I love saying this — can do by herself,” Warren said at a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, in May, when explaining what she will do to address climate change. The Massachusetts senator said she would ban drilling on federal lands on her first day in office as president.
Candidates in the crowded Democratic presidential field broadly support reversing many measures taken by the Trump administration, such as ending zero-tolerance immigration enforcement that led to the separation of migrant families, reentering the Paris climate agreement, and reversing the ban preventing transgender people from serving in the military.