If elected president, Kamala Harris’ first day in the Oval Office would present Democrats with a once-in-a-generation opportunity — a chance to advance the work of her predecessor.
Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Barack Obama each spent their first day as president signing executive orders that reversed many of the policies of the last White House occupant. But since she is the sitting vice president, Harris would face a dynamic that hasn’t confronted the White House since then-Vice President George H. W. Bush ascended to the top job in 1989: defending and expanding the previous administration’s legacy.
And there’s no shortage of unfinished work from the Biden administration, lawmakers and experts say — especially on energy and climate.
How exactly Harris would approach these issues remains an open question. On the campaign trail, she has been largely circumspect about policy specifics, other than affirming her support for continued climate action while making clear she no longer supports a fracking ban.
For their part, most Democratic lawmakers want Harris to focus on implementing the massive climate programs started under Biden — an approach that could dovetail with her campaign’s focus on housing and other cost-of-living issues.
Other Day 1 options include declaring a climate emergency — a move the Biden administration reportedly considered in 2022 when its energy agenda seemed dead in Congress, and building on Biden’s pause on liquified natural gas export permits. (A court this summer reversed that pause pending a lawsuit.)
While not directly related to climate, Harris’ campaign has promised she would use her first day in office to “bring down prices” and “take on big corporations that engage in illegal price gouging and corporate landlords that unfairly raise rents on working families.”
Progressive lawmakers and advocates see plenty of room for climate action in those Day 1 pledges, even if the details are up in the air. She could, for instance, include Big Oil among the industries she identifies as needing to be reined in amid accusations of price fixing — a callback to her days as the attorney general of California.
Yet with polls showing a tight race against Trump, climate hawks generally have refrained from pressuring her, especially on the kind of politically charged actions that define most presidents’ first days.
The most important thing Harris must do on climate, California Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman said, is “win the damn election.”
That’s a sharp reversal from four years ago, when progressives pressured Biden’s campaign to commit to a raft of climate actions.
As a result, on his Inauguration Day, Biden signed 17 executive orders and proclamations — a stack of folders towering from his desk to his shoulder — that included rejoining the Paris climate agreement, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, ordering agencies to integrate environmental justice into their programs and outlining a bevy of regulatory actions for his term in office, from auto standards to oil and gas regulations.
Harris would have less low-hanging fruit to pluck, inheriting the Oval Office from a president of her own party. That hasn’t stopped progressives from dreaming up all the ways she could go further than Biden, even if they aren’t yet pressuring her to make promises to do so.
“Declaring a climate emergency, that would be a bold move,” said California Rep. Ro Khanna, who chaired the House Oversight Committee’s environment panel when Democrats were in the majority. That could pave the way for her to build on Biden’s LNG pause, he added. “It would open up powers to restrict the export of oil and gas.”
But Harris has not stressed climate on the campaign trail. Instead, she has swung in the opposite direction, emphasizing the expansion of domestic oil and gas production under the Biden administration’s watch and declaring that continued fracking won’t jeopardize emissions reduction targets.
It has left climate hawks to mull other ways of weaving climate into the issues she is choosing to run on, such as housing.
“I have continuously preached the need for a climate emergency; I tried to get Biden to do it on Day One, I‘d love for Kamala to do it on Day One,” Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said. “But I don’t think that’s what she’s focused on right now.”
“She’s focused, appropriately, on the kitchen table, the things that people in America are really wrestling with right now,” Merkley continued. “And she laid out in the debate what she’ll do with homeownership, rental housing, with the rent [costs] going through the roof … those are the top things that people are worried about.”
Some experts say the dynamic facing Harris — where climate is embedded in many policies, rather than a stand-alone issue — is a sign of how much progress already has been made under Biden.
“She has a remarkably better landscape than Biden did on his first day,” said Craig Segall, senior vice president at the climate policy and advocacy group Evergreen Action.
That’s because clean energy is cheaper and the electricity grid is on a path to decarbonizing, he explained, “which basically means that we’re now in a place where you can go after the harder sectors.”
For that reason climate advocates need to be nimble about crafting policy ideas that align with her priorities, Segall added: “She has this incredible opportunity now where the big remaining [sectors] of emissions — in industry, housing, transportation — all line up really well with their larger ‘opportunity economy’ frame.”
For instance, Harris has talked about making housing more affordable, taking on big landlords — and making sure indoor air is safe for children. In that pledge, climate advocates hear a commitment to move away from gas appliances, but one that’s framed in a way that’s palatable to swing voters.
“Everything is climate,” Segall said.
Implementing climate programs from the Inflation Reduction Act will comprise a big part of Harris’ first term. And just as Biden outlined a regulatory agenda on his first day, some see Harris’ most important task as organizing her administration to craft regulations swiftly and get climate funding out the door quickly.
Another sleeper climate issue, some lawmakers said, is rebuilding federal agencies from years of underinvestment that worsened under the Trump administration. Democrats have made that a priority under Biden, but they say the IRA’s implementation depends on Harris continuing that work.
“We have to rebuild these agencies so as to have the experts that would proficiently get the money out,” said New York Rep. Paul Tonko, a senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and co-chair of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition.
Ultimately, no matter what Harris’ climate agenda entails, significant new policies will require more congressional action. Members of Congress already are talking about what that might look like, and how it might fit into Harris’ early priorities.
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, one of the leading Senate Democrats on climate, said he would prefer Harris give lawmakers the space to advance an environmental legislative agenda that aligns with her vision, too.
“I’m going to use what influence I have to make sure they have a plan that is sufficient and meets the challenge and the opportunity. That may mean they don’t need to hurry a bunch of executive orders in the last week in January,” he said of a potential future Harris administration. “The wisdom of the Biden-Harris administration was to let the Congress work its will.”
Schatz also said he has started having conversations with “members, interested parties and modeling shops” about what Democrats could do in another budget reconciliation package to build on the climate gains of the IRA — should they win a governing trifecta in November.
Reconciliation bills allow the majority party to pass party-line legislation without having to overcome the Senate filibuster.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) says she already has a plan she hopes a future Harris administration would embrace, either as standalone legislation or as a component of a reconciliation measure: “The Homes Act,” legislation she introduced on Wednesday with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), that would create a “public option” for housing.
“My colleagues tell me that housing is at the forefront of voters’ minds,” Smith said in an interview, explaining that her new bill “says specifically we should be building green — we should be building for energy efficiency — because that is going to be good for reducing pollution and it’s going to lower utility costs for living in these buildings.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and House Judiciary ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) unveiled a bill this month that would establish a “Polluters Pay Climate Fund,” which major fossil fuel companies would have to contribute to as penance for exacerbating climate change. Van Hollen told POLITICO’s E&E News his legislation was designed to be incorporated into a reconciliation bill down the line.
And New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, who is next in line to be the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is urging Harris to endorse policies that would further seek to decarbonize the industrial sector — though he emphasized any climate action by Harris should start with IRA implementation.
“That’s not, like, a departure from where we are now. But that’s the point,” he said. “We have the best tool to address climate that we’ve ever had. First we have to protect that, then we can build on top of that.”
