So every president has a big legislative priority that they want to get done in their first year.

The first year is always the pivotal time where you can push big pieces of legislation forward.

And regardless of party or ideology or the merits of the ideas, the basic question that drives it

for every single one of them is typically pretty simple. What's the problem you want to

solve? Maybe it was the problem you inherited. Maybe it's making good on a campaign promise. Maybe it's a

crisis nobody's stopped coming that's now sitting in your lap because you're the president. I mean,

I worked for two presidents and that's how it went for them, but that's how it goes, has gone for pretty much every president for decades.

Obama's first 18 months were focused around getting the Recovery Act passed because his priority at the time was digging the country out of the huge economic hole, the massive unemployment rate crisis that was created by the 2008

financial meltdown. He also fought to pass Dodd-Frank, a Wall Street reform package,

to address the problems that had led to the financial crisis. And of course, he pushed very,

very, very hard for the Affordable Care Act because far too many Americans lacked

health insurance. He was solving clear problems, pulling the country out of an economic hole,

trying to prevent it from happening again, trying to give people health insurance who didn't have it.

Fast forward to when Joe Biden took office. That was the height of a global pandemic. And his focus was,

of course, on delivering a rescue plan to help address the economic damage it was causing and to

help get all sorts of equipment out to people, whether it was tests or masks or things to help

people address and prevent them from getting COVID. That was his focus.

He also signed a giant bill into law that addressed the country's infrastructure needs,

something way overdue. Remember the infrastructure week that was in Trump's first term,

seemingly every week? Well, Joe Biden actually did it. And then he passed another law that

tackled inflation and the climate crisis. He was trying to answer questions,

trying to address the COVID crisis, but also address problems he had long wanted to solve,

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