WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — On the campaign trail and through his first days in the White House, President Joe Biden has continued to press for bipartisan support. This week, Biden will address the nation and speak before a joint session of Congress for the first time since the inauguration.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says after this, Mr. Biden will attempt to grow relationships across the aisle.
“I would expect. You all should expect the president to invite members to the White House soon after the joint session address,” said Psaki.
But top Republicans say comprise will be hard to come by.
“If I look at the 100 days, it’s more like a bait and switch. The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan, but the switch is he’s governed as a socialist,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Fox News.
“Wanting to raise taxes and a large amount and regulate America basically out of business… So I’m not very impressed with the first 100 days. This is not what I thought I would get from Joe Biden,” Lindsay Graham said on Fox News.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political science Professor Dr. Mordecai Lee believes bipartisan support won’t happen because many Republicans disagree firmly with Biden’s policy agenda.
“We are seeing this sort of partisan gridlock and if a president wants to govern. I guess a president has to accept the political reality of what politics are like nowadays. The reality is that we’ve gotten so ideological and we have so much animus towards the other party. That the whole concept of compromise has really disappeared,” said Lee.
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So far, Mr. Biden has signed more than 60 executive actions with 23 being direct reversals of Donald Trump administration policies.
Most of the orders focus on immigration, the coronavirus, and climate change.
“President Biden in the first couple of weeks, he said he wanted a big stimulus bill about $2 trillion. He preferred to proceed in a bipartisan way. But the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, 50 of the other 50, just were not interested. They didn’t want to help him succeed. They didn’t necessary agree with his policy agenda,” said Lee.
Lee says executive orders have been a way for president’s to get around partisan hurdles.
However, compromise in Congress could be the key to getting key issues solved in the country.
“Now we’ve gotten into such an ideological age that the idea of compromising is considered sort of a betrayal and a sellout. And so what we see in the rhetoric of the extreme silos of the two parties is that compromise is a bad thing and people are going to get primaried because they weren’t willing to stick with ideological purity. That really is sort of the sin of the century of American politics,” said Lee.
Mr. Biden will cross the 100-day mark of his presidency on Friday.