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> and pardoning those convicted of simple possession without preventing somebody tomorrow from being arrested for simple possession.

He is also directing the AG and Secretary of HHS is reexamine the scheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act which is the process in law which is needed to change the legal regime applicable to it without Congressional action.

He’s not a dictator who can rewrite law at a whim.

The student debt changes are substantial even if it's not free college. The more important part of the package is the changes to the terms of repayment:

From the press release[1]:

Make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers by:

    Cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans. The Department of Education is proposing a new income-driven repayment plan that protects more low-income borrowers from making any payments and caps monthly payments for undergraduate loans at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income—half of the rate that borrowers must pay now under most existing plans. This means that the average annual student loan payment will be lowered by more than $1,000 for both current and future borrowers. 

    Fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program by proposing a rule that borrowers who have worked at a nonprofit, in the military, or in federal, state, tribal, or local government, receive appropriate credit toward loan forgiveness. These improvements will build on temporary changes the Department of Education has already made to PSLF, under which more than 175,000 public servants have already had more than $10 billion in loan forgiveness approved.

This perhaps by far the bigger set of changes because it ensures the terms of remaining and future loans remain serviceable and proportionate to the actual earning potential of the recipient, which is half the problem with the system (at least if you simply must run it this way).

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

The student loan system is not the real problem, and it's less of a problem now than before Obama (one of the few things that he did good on imo.) The problem is how expensive college is, not these games with paperwork.

Seems like both are huge problems. Tuition costs is the bigger problem, but I don't think the president can force them to lower their prices.

He could expand funding for colleges, or create more of them, so they have to compete on prices. This would benefit everybody instead of the minority that signed up for bad loans.

I'm not constitutional lawyer, but those sound like things only the legislature can do, which is beyond his control. The things he has done are things the executive has in it's power.

Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action. The executive might have the power to ask the FDA to remove it from schedule 1, but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature) the US is required to enforce restrictions against marijuna according to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

> but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature) the US is required to enforce restrictions against marijuna

Except when contradicted by the constitution or established legal process as a Party state.

> but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature)

The Senate alone.

> Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action

Rescheduling it subject to treaty restrictions from treaties in force, but Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.

Amending the treaty requires a bunch of other countries plus the Senate, and modifying the status of marijuana inconsistent with the treaty while it is in force would take a change in law by Congress (but would violate the treaty.)

Note that the current treaty status only requires medical use / prescription requirements, so it could be substantially less restricted than it currently is federally without running into treaty issues.

> Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.

Can you give an example? I am not aware of any authority granted to the executive to override the legislature in this way. Is there an explicitly granted loophole or are these cases of executive overreach?

Remember the time Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization?

Trump certainly made a lot of noise about threatening to, but did he ever actually do that?

Kinda. The process takes too long for him to have withdrawn, but he formally started the process and Biden canceled it. https://www.axios.com/2020/07/07/trump-withdraw-world-health...

Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_...

The Iran nuclear deal wasn't a treaty, which is why he was able to pull out.

That is incorrect, according to Congress, themselves:

“Both Congress and the Administration have the ability to alter marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance.”

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11204

I mention the executive branch's ability (via the FDA) to remove it from schedule 1, but that's not the same thing as complete descheduling.

They also have the ability to initiate or request that proceedings initiate under the Convention to have cannabis deleted from the schedules.

edit: but apparently, besides that or whatever other options the executive branch review discovers, or whatever the judicial branch comes up with, you are right

https://businessofcannabis.com/2022/09/16/us-court-of-appeal...

I have a firm belief that presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators, of either party, that are standing in the way of things that have overwhelming popular support.

Instead, they just throw treats to their base when they're in trouble. Treats that are written on water. If I hear another thing about the Dreamers.

People keep saying that he can't do anything because he's not a dictator. He can't do anything because he doesn't believe in it, and even if he did doesn't have any ideological standards for his Congressional party that would ever get him majority support for anything that doesn't have lobbying checks behind it.

He did? Just not on this point or student loans. The inflation reduction act had been blocked in the senate by his own party defectors and he managed to get them to flip in a last minute political coup on what the republicans thought was going to happen

> presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators

And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?

Congress is gridlocked. Incumbents almost never lose their seats. The people who care enough to vote and support the issues are already voting as hard as they can.

This announcement? This is him doing what he can, both in terms of his legal ability to change things, as the chief executive, and in terms of using the bully pulpit, making clear where his and his administrations' priorities lie.

Basically, it sounds like you're saying "if the President can't force the legislation he wants to materialize and get through a Congress that is historically dysfunctional, that means he doesn't really care about the issue."

> And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?

This can always be an excuse. Things can't be done because they can't be done. The fact is that he's giving speeches about how much he hates China and Russia, and not about legalizing pot.

He's also one of the engineers of the shitty situation that we're in, he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career, so I'm not ever going to be convinced by this woe is me lark. He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.) The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.

> how, exactly, do you propose he do that

The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.

> he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career

Ok sure, not only that, but he is the president who has the least number of spare brain cells to devote to an issue that he opposes on principle.

And yet of all the presidents we've had in the past 4 decades, it wasn't the B-movie star, nor the frat boy, not the draft dodger(s), nor the iconoclast reality TV star, nor even our first and only Black president -- but Biden the Old Catholic who actually got this seemingly simple reform with simple possession of pot.

As you said, he's the guy with the least reason and capacity to get it done, and yet here we are. How are you managing to complain that what he did was so simple and miniscule, and yet no one else came close to doing it?

> The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.

I wouldn't be too sure that Biden had staff more devoted toward drug reform than Obama [0]. But I guess you're stuck with that position since you can't fathom that Biden personally pushed for reform. So how did Biden end up with this successful drug reform team, just random chance? If Biden is so stridently anti-drug, so absolutely useless toward pushing reform as you think he must be, then how did that not trickle down to his senior staff and who they hired and what the prioritized?

> The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.

Politics is all about building consensus through compromise and collaboration. Biden may hate marijuana reform, but he prioritized and executed in a way that past presidents didn't, ostensibly because he knew it was something that lots of people love. How is that not great politics?

[0] https://www.marijuanamoment.net/new-book-obama-considered-de...

Biden still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in marijuana reform and may not follow through any further. For example, he excluded/discriminated members of his own cabinet that admitted to marijuana use while choosing a Vice President that admitted to marijuana use, which is puzzling.

> He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.)

If this is true, then this is politics working as intended.

Seriously, that is exactly how the system is supposed to work: The officials we elect do what we, the people, want, not just push their personal beliefs at all costs.

I would 1000% rather elect someone I agree with on 50% of issues, who is willing to be swayed by popular opinion, than someone I agree with on 80% of issues, who is going to try to enforce their personal beliefs as law no matter what the people actually want.

He's being pushed? He promised to do this himself during the campaign. There is no credible evidence of any kind that he did this because he was "being pushed". In any case, it's the right move, and he did the right thing, and honestly, people like you need to pipe down, relax, smoke a fucking joint, be honest, and give him credit here where credit is due.

As for Biden "knowing how to do politics", you might want to spend some time studying Biden's astonishing legislative results over the past few months. He's apparently quite good at politics.

Just for fun: these "people in his [Biden's] administration" you speak of...who chose those people? I'm a little confused. Perhaps you can clear this point up.

Just be honest: you have 937 axes to grind and you are desperate to avoid giving Biden any credit, ever, for anything.

> I have a firm belief that presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators

That’s exactly what he just did with the pardons. He’s signaling to voters that he wants to legalize it and needs the right partners in Congress to make it happen. From your other comments I don’t get the impression you’re open to discussing the implications so much as you just want to complain about Biden.

He doesn't need congress to "legalize it" he only needs the DEA and FDA to unscheduled it. He can do that as expeditiously as he likes with an executive order.

Wait, genuinely confused here. Do we really want the president to make unilateral executive moves overriding the existing organizations with actual experts on how to do things? Isn't that kind of bad and dictatorial? Weren't these organizations originally created because the president isn't an expert in drugs and therefore should have a fleet of drug experts with the authority to make decisions?

Ah the "expert fallacy." No, there are very few "experts." Mostly just career deep-staters or unelected-bureaucrats or whatever else you want to call them. Just look at the great results we've gotten so far from the "fleet of drug experts."

I mean yeah I think the FDA, CDC, NIH, OSHA, EPA etc. have done some really awesome shit compared to when we didn't have them. The EPA in particular is doing such a good job moneyed lobbyists are preemtively trying to cut off their ability to regulate emissions.

Yeah that opioid epidemic was some "really awesome shit." What would we ever do without the FDA and their regulatory capture in the pharma-industrial complex?

https://www.businessinsider.com/fda-chief-approved-oxycontin...

I mean frankly the opioid epidemic could only be discovered because of organizations like the CDC tracking stuff like this, so yeah that's pretty awesome. Remember that before we had organizations like the CDC and the FDA things like opioids had no regulation at all. These aren't perfect organizations and we should always be critical and pushing them to do better, but it is also vitally important to acknowledge they are worth having around at all.

Wow, that is certainly moving the goal posts faster than QAnon and make me question why on earth would we trust the same experts that have a history of lying. God I remember the propaganda they spewed years ago about marijuana making my testicles shrink and that it was a gateway to meth.

Placing and maintaining marijuana as a schedule 1 drug clearly indicates that these departments are not experts.

Except your argument doesn't hold water. Biden isn't "in trouble"; his approval rating has actually been steadily rising of late, and this policy change reportedly took some time to work on.

You also really need to do some homework on the US House and the degree to which gerrymandering has made it completely impossible for your dreams of "appeals to voters" to work.

Student debt forgiveness is also something that only the legislature can do - Nancy Pelosi admitted this as recently as a year ago. Biden doesn't have the power to forgive student debt by himself, but he's doing it anyway, it's blatantly illegal and no-one cares.

Given the pardon fully restores all rights I would say yes he has done that. Of course again this only applies to federal convictions

He doesn't have the power to change the law on his own. He's requested that the justice department reschedule the drug. I'm not sure what more within his power would allow him to "whole ass" this.

Tell DEMOCRATS he would veto any legislation until they pass whatever he wants. They can do it, they have the votes and have passed legislation with 0 Republican support. But that is far from necessary here.

With regard to Marijuana and the controlled substances act, Biden could issue an executive order to change the schedule of any substance right away. He could also issue an EO for the DOJ/IRS to change any regulations regarding marijuana that impact legal states or MJ related prosecutions.

He has a lot more power than this action implies, especially regarding things that aren't made law via statue but regulations set by executive branch departments.

Not waiting to the last minute, the timing is highly suspect and looks like him buying more votes.

Yes, the pardon wipes it off your record.

he's also moving toward removing it from the classification that would leave it as a scheduled drug federally and urging state govs to legalize it locally.

Reference por favor

> Third, I am asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Federal law currently classifies marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances. This is the same schedule as for heroin and LSD, and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine – the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic.