Hits and Misses
Plenty of state and local health officials have stepped down from their jobs in the last 10 months after being on the receiving end of vitriol and threats arising from coronavirus restrictions, but Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine has hung in there. In her case, the hostility has surely been amplified because she is transgender. But Levine has persevered in a thankless job since last March, and has generally done a good job managing the response in the commonwealth to COVID-19. Now, Levine’s skill and fortitude have been recognized by the incoming Biden administration – pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate, she will become assistant health secretary and the first openly transgender federal official to be placed in such a post. In a statement the day before his inauguration, Biden praised Levine’s “steady leadership and essential expertise,” and added, “She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”
As he takes office, the two primary items on President Biden’s agenda are getting COVID-19 under control and kicking the economy back into gear, which will become much easier once the virus is in the rearview mirror. Biden has proposed a relief package that comes close to costing $2 trillion, and includes $1,400 checks going out to every American adult. This would be in addition to $600 checks that were approved in December. The idea behind the checks is sound – putting money directly into people’s pockets will provide relief if their wages have been slashed or if they have become unemployed, and people who are doing OK will spend the money and inject it back into the economy. But we have to wonder if a portion of those checks are just going into savings accounts and not being spent. Perhaps a more targeted form of relief should be considered, with $1,400 checks going to individuals who have immediate needs, or going to low-income families. After all, do Americans comfortably nestled in the top echelon of earners and whose feathers have barely been ruffled by the pandemic really need an additional $1,400?
In the waning months of his administration, President Trump proposed that a statuary park called the National Garden of American Heroes be created, which would honor scores of noteworthy Americans. No location has been chosen, no funding has been earmarked and it seems unlikely the Biden administration will make it anywhere close to a high priority. But the proposed park would tip the hat to a fairly diverse selection of Americans, from Ronald Reagan to Woody Guthrie, and on Monday some notable figures from this region were added to the list of people who could get statues. They include the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, Pittsburgh Pirates legend Roberto Clemente and Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh. If it ever is finally built, the National Garden of American Heroes will showcase the importance of Western Pennsylvania within the American story.
As the powers of the presidency passed into his hands at noon on Wednesday, President Biden was delivering an inaugural address that may have lacked the inspirational zest of addresses given by predecessors like John F. Kennedy or Franklin Roosevelt, but nonetheless may well have been what the nation needed at this juncture. Acknowledging the toll of the coronavirus on people and the economy, the canyon-deep divisions in the country and the fragility of democracy following the insurrection at the Capitol two weeks ago, Biden promised he would do his best to unite Americans, listen to those who didn’t support him and, in his words, be a president for the whole country. We wish him luck in this endeavor.