Jamie Keene, An Executive Action Plan for the Next Administration

Jamie Keene, a fellow at Economic Security Project and former Special Assistant to the President for Equality and Opportunity in the Biden-Harris White House, presents a blueprint of four executive actions a future progressive administration could take to expand cash assistance without waiting on Congress. Drawing on her experience inside the administration — where she saw how much time gets lost building internal consensus rather than implementing policy — she argues for using the next governing moment’s first weeks to act, not deliberate.

Her four proposals: (1) broadening TANF into more of a child allowance by expanding non-recurrent short-term benefit authority; (2) using a Medicaid 1115 waiver to offer a “birth grant” during pregnancy and postpartum; (3) unlocking Title IV-E prevention funds for cash-based child welfare prevention, to address poverty-driven family separation; and (4) pairing cash with a market-focused agenda — stronger competition/consumer-protection enforcement and a price-capped “basic basket” of essentials, modeled on Mexico’s canasta básica — so cash stretches further. All four proposals are framed as complements to, not substitutes for, a bolder legislative agenda in 2029.