WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at least some of the outgoing president's legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
“Let’s make every day count," President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation last week after Vice President Kamala Harris conceded defeat to Trump in the presidential race.
Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden's landmark climate and health care law and stop clean-energy development projects.
"There’s only one administration at a time,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters at a news conference Thursday. “That’s true now, and it will also be true after January 20th. Our responsibility is to make good use of the funds that Congress has authorized for us and that we’re responsible for assigning and disbursing throughout the last three years.”
But Trump will control more than the purse strings come January. His administration also can propose new regulations to undo some of what the Biden administration did through the rule-making process.
Here are some of the moves the Biden administration is taking now:
Biden administration officials hope that projects funded under the $1 trillion infrastructure law and $375 billion climate law will endure beyond Biden’s term and are working to ensure that money from the landmark measures continues to flow.
On Friday, Buttigieg announced over $3.4 billion in grants for projects designed to improve passenger rail service, help U.S. ports, reduce highway deaths and support domestic manufacturing of sustainable transportation materials.
”We are investing in better transportation systems that touch every corner of the country and in the workers who will manufacture materials and build projects,″ he said. “Communities are going to see safer commutes, cleaner air and stronger supply chains that we all count on.″
Announcements of major environmental grants and project approvals have sped up in recent months in what White House officials describe as “sprinting to the finish” of Biden’s four-year term.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently set a nationwide deadline for removal of lead pipes and announced nearly $3 billion to help local water systems comply. The agency also announced that oil and gas companies for the first time will have to pay a federal fee if they emit dangerous methane above certain levels.
The Energy Department, meanwhile, announced a $544 million loan to a Michigan company to expand manufacturing of high-quality silicon carbide wafers for electric vehicles. The loan is one of 28 deals totaling $37 billion granted under a clean-energy loan program that was revived and expanded under Biden.
“There is a new urgency to get it all done. We’re seeing explosions of money going out the door," said Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club. Biden and his allies ”really want to finish the job they started."
Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters this week that Biden wants to “spend down the authority that Congress has allocated and authorized before he leaves office. So we’re going to work very hard to make sure that happens.”
The Biden administration would have to rush $7.1 billion in weapons — $4.3 billion from the 2024 supplemental and $2.8 billion that is still on the books in savings due to the Pentagon recalculating the value of systems sent — from the Pentagon’s stockpiles in order to spend all of those funds obligated before Trump is sworn in.
There’s also another $2.2 billion available to put weapons systems on long-term contracts. However, recent aid packages have been much smaller in size, around $200 million to $300 million each.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said the funds are already obligated, which should make them harder to take back because the incoming administration would have to reverse that.
Another priority for the White House is getting Senate confirmation of as many federal judges as possible before Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20.
The Senate this week voted 51-44 to confirm former prosecutor April Perry as a U.S. District Court judge in northern Illinois. More than a dozen pending judicial nominees have advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee; eight judicial nominations are awaiting committee votes and six are waiting for committee hearings.
Trump has urged Republicans to oppose efforts to confirm judicial nominees. “No Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership,” he wrote on social media site X on Nov. 10, before congressional Republicans chose their new leaders.
The Education Department has been hurrying to finalize a new federal rule that would cancel student loans for people who face financial hardship. The proposal — one of Biden’s only student loan plans that hasn’t been halted by federal courts — is in a public comment period scheduled to end Dec. 2.
After that, the department would have a narrow window to finalize the rule and begin carrying it out, a process that usually takes months. Like Biden’s other efforts, it would almost certainly face a legal challenge.
Additionally, the Biden administration has room to speed up student loan cancellation for people who were already promised relief because they were cheated by their colleges, said Aaron Ament, an Education Department official for the Obama administration and president of the National Student Legal Defense Network.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona could decide that case and others rather than hand them off to the Trump administration, which is expected to be far friendlier to for-profit colleges. “It’s a no-brainer,” Ament said. “There’s a good number of cases that have been sitting on Cardona’s desk. It’s hard to imagine that those would just be left untouched."
Trump has not yet said what he would do on student loan forgiveness. However, he and Republicans have criticized Biden's efforts.
Associated Press writers Tara Copp and Dan Merica contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The party of Sri Lanka’s new Marxist-leaning President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won a two-thirds majority in parliament, according to official election results Friday, providing a strong mandate for his program for economic revival.
Dissanayake’s National People’s Power Party won 159 of the 225 seats, according to the Elections Commission.
The Samagi Jana Balawegaya, or United People's Power Party, led by opposition leader Sajith Premadasa had 40 seats and was in second place.
The election comes at a decisive time for Sri Lankans, as the island nation is struggling to emerge from the worst economic crisis in its history, having declared bankruptcy after defaulting on its external debt in 2022.
The margin of victory will enable Dissanayake to carry out sweeping reforms, including a campaign promise of anew constitution, without having to rely on other parties.
Dissanayake was elected president on Sept. 21 in a rejection of traditional political parties that have governed the island nation since its independence from British rule in 1948. He received just 42% of the votes, fueling questions over his party’s prospects in Thursday’s parliamentary elections. But the party received a large increase in support less than two months into his presidency.
In a major surprise and a big shift in the country's electoral landscape, his party won the Jaffna district, the heartland of ethnic Tamils in the north, and many other minority strongholds.
The victory in Jaffna represents a great dent for traditional ethnic Tamil parties that have dominated the politics of the north since independence.
It is also a major shift in the attitude of Tamils, who have long been suspicious of majority ethnic Sinhalese leaders. Ethnic Tamil rebels fought an unsuccessful civil war in 1983-2009 to create a separate homeland, saying they were being marginalized by governments controlled by Sinhalese.
According to conservative U.N. estimates, more than 100,000 people were killed in the conflict.
Top NPP official Tilvin Silva described the victory as “complete and one with political weight,” because voters from all corners of the country voted for a single program. He especially thanked Tamil voters in the north for trusting a leader outside their stronghold.
“We have very well understood the weight of this victory. The people have placed immense trust on us and we must keep that trust,” he said.
Veeragathy Thanabalasingham, a Colombo-based political analyst, said northern voters chose the NPP because they were disillusioned with traditional Tamil parties but could not find a local alternative.
“The Tamil parties were divided and contested separately, and as a result the Tamil people's representation is scattered,” he said.
Of the 225 seats in parliament, 196 were up for grabs under Sri Lanka’s electoral system, which allocates seats in each district among the parties according to the proportion of the votes they get.
The remaining 29 seats — called the national list seats — are allocated to parties and independent groups according to the proportion of the total votes they receive countrywide.
Sri Lanka is in the middle of a bailout program with the International Monetary Fund, with debt restructuring with international creditors nearly complete.
Dissanayake said during the presidential campaign that he would propose significant changes to the targets set in the IMF deal signed by his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, saying it placed too much burden on the people. However, he has since changed his stance and says Sri Lanka will go along with the agreement.
Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, which along with militant attacks in 2019 devastated the important tourism industry. The pandemic also disrupted the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad.
The government also slashed taxes in 2019, depleting the treasury just as the virus hit. Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, leaving Sri Lanka unable to pay for imports or defend its currency, the rupee.
Sri Lanka’s economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022. Parliament then elected Wickremesinghe to replace him.,
The economy was stabilized, inflation dropped, the rupee strengthened and foreign reserves increased under Wickremesinghe. Nonetheless, he lost the election as public dissatisfaction grew over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses as part of the government’s efforts to meet the IMF conditions.
Voters were also drawn by the NPP’s cry for change in the political culture and an end to corruption, because they perceived the parties that ruled Sri Lanka so far caused the economic collapse.
Dissanayake’s promise to punish members of previous governments accused of corruption and to recover allegedly stolen assets also raised much hope among the people.
Jeewantha Balasuriya, 42, a businessman from the town of Gampaha, said he hopes Dissanayake and his party will use their resounding victory to rebuild the country.
“People have given them a strong mandate. I am hopeful that the NPP will use this mandate to uplift the country from the present pathetic situation,” he said.
Workers leave a poll counting center following the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
People walk past polling results displayed on a giant screen outside a vote counting center following the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
People watch polling results displayed on a giant screen outside a vote counting center following the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
People queue up to cast their votes at a polling station during the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024.(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Polling workers return to a counting center with a ballot box at the end of the polling in the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake leaves after casting his vote during the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024.(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
