Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Former director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, center, listens to then–Vice President Joe Biden in a January 2014 meeting in Washington.
There are now just a handful of Biden inner-circle campaign aides who have not yet been given senior White House posts in his administration, and not quite enough top jobs to go around.
The jobs include head of the National Economic Council, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the slightly lower-ranking but still important chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. And handicappers may be surprised at who gets what.
Two of the leading progressives thought to be in contention to head the NEC and/or the CEA, Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein, may end up being bigfooted by inner-circle Biden people demanding top jobs and by the diversity needs of the new administration.
My sources say the Council of Economic Advisers is likely to be chaired by a Black woman. Two leading contenders are:
Cecilia Rouse, an African American economist who served on Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, and who is now dean of what used to be known as the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton until Wilson was canceled. (How about the W.E.B. Du Bois School?)
Also under consideration is Lisa Cook, an eminent economist and economic historian now at Michigan State, also serving on the Biden transition team.
Those super-insiders still waiting at the altar include:
Bruce Reed, a former chief of staff to the vice president, and the most fiscally conservative of Biden’s inner circle. See this earlier piece on why Reed would be a disaster as head of OMB.
Brian Deese, a former deputy director of both OMB and the NEC. Deese claims some environmental cred, having been Obama’s counselor on climate and energy, and was involved in negotiating the 2015 Paris accord, though the prime negotiator was Obama himself. Deese currently is in charge of the Sustainable Investing team at BlackRock, a massive greenwashing operation (they also do fossil fuels big-time). As my colleague David Dayen writes, Deese is not trusted by many in the environmental community.
Jeff Zients, the most senior Biden insider not yet placed. He runs a Warren Buffett–style holding company called Cranemere. Far from a progressive, though not on bad terms with labor.
The outer economic inner circle includes two progressives (Boushey and Bernstein) and two liberals (Sperling and Harris):
The aforementioned Heather Boushey heads the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She was a core part of the Biden campaign economic team. The WCEG was initially a spin-off of the Center for American Progress, which has close ties to both Obama and Clinton alums.
Jared Bernstein was formerly at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to the vice president; personally close to Biden; also a key player on the campaign’s economic team.
Gene Sperling, former senior economic official under both Obama and Clinton, more progressive than he used to be.
Ben Harris, another senior member of the campaign’s economic policy staff. The main strike against him is that he served as policy director of the Robert Rubin–funded Hamilton Project, famous for small-bore rather than transformative ideas.
Here’s what’s deeply troubling. Based on sheer insider influence, the risk is Deese at NEC and Zients or Reed at OMB. It would be a lot better for progressive policy goals to have Boushey or Bernstein head NEC and Sperling at OMB.
Maybe Janet Yellen, now that she is official, can weigh in. Treasury works intimately with OMB. The last thing she needs is to have heads of the NEC and OMB well to her right.
