Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo
Jared Bernstein, as Vice President Joe Biden’s economic policy adviser, speaks during the White House daily briefing, June 8, 2009.
I have been obsessing about the risk that Joe Biden will keep talking like a progressive, only to appoint the usual suspects to top Cabinet posts, especially where economics are concerned. I’ve already written about the post of Treasury secretary. Elizabeth Warren would be best; and if not Warren, former Fed governor and Treasury deputy secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin.
But Treasury is only one of several crucial jobs. Two others are chair of the National Economic Council and head of the Office of Management and Budget.
The National Economic Council post coordinates all economic-policy discussion and serves as the president’s top direct adviser. The OMB chief deals with a great deal of policy beyond the budget.
Happily, there are two well-respected progressive senior advisers to the Biden campaign who could do either job: Jared Bernstein, the vice president’s chief economist during the Obama years, and Heather Boushey, who heads the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Both began as labor economists but have far more general knowledge of the whole range of economic issues. Given the absolute centrality of jobs and income, what better background for two of the top economic jobs? Financiers allied with capital have long gotten these posts. Maybe it’s labor’s turn.
Here’s the inside baseball: In terms of their curricula vitae, both were once at the labor-left Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve), but more recently held senior posts at two more center-leftish think tanks—the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Bernstein’s case, and the Center for American Progress in the case of Boushey.
What’s the difference? CAP and CBPP don’t frighten moderately liberal Democrats, of the sort who dominate Biden’s senior political team. CAP has long been the Hillary Clinton brain trust in exile. Boushey was expected to get a senior post in a Clinton presidency.
The Center on Budget, where Bernstein has had his day job, is concerned about poverty, inequality, and adequate funding of public institutions—but somehow never gets around to challenging Wall Street in its overall work on income distribution. (This is kind of like performing Hamlet without the Prince.) It is sufficiently safe that Robert Rubin has spoken at its fundraisers.
CBPP is also averse to large and prolonged deficits, stressing the need for adequate revenue to meet public needs. So on both counts, more moderate Democrats advising Biden might be less fearful of these two appointees than of more explicit lefties.
That said, both Bernstein and Boushey are terrific, and could bridge the Biden wing of the party with the Warren-Sanders wing in terms of the actual policies they would recommend.
And speaking of OMB, there is one second-tier job that is really a first-tier job—head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Please stay awake, this will be on the pop quiz. Failure to pay attention to who gets jobs like these is how presidencies are lost.
OIRA, located in the Office of Management and Budget, was created under Jimmy Carter, but was first really exploited by Ronald Reagan. The idea was that the presidency, via OMB, should have one office to review all policy proposals by quasi-independent regulatory agencies, to make sure that the administration speaks with one voice.
In practice, OIRA has served as the graveyard of good regulatory policy. Urgently needed draft regulations are floated by regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Food and Drug Administration, only to be delayed to death, watered down, or killed outright by OIRA, which is required to sign off on them.
The worst offender was Obama’s head of OIRA, Cass Sunstein, who actually boasted in one of his books that thanks to his work, the Obama administration issued fewer regulations in its first four years than Reagan, Clinton, or either of the Bushes. I was so appalled by Sunstein’s destructive reign that I wrote this investigative article for Harper’s.
In practice, OIRA has served as the graveyard of good regulatory policy.
The Prospect recently ran a piece suggesting that OIRA be repurposed by the next Democratic administration, and turned into a government-wide advocate for regulation, rather than its cemetery. This is especially needed, after the demolition job done by Trump and his henchmen.
That would require the leadership of a true progressive with broad-spectrum expertise on the several areas of government regulation. To head OIRA, how about Rob Weissman, who leads Public Citizen? Or Lisa Heinzerling, a leading critic of cost-benefit analysis now at Georgetown Law, who spent several years at EPA under Obama doing battle with Sunstein?
Here’s a little more inside baseball: The way the appointments process works, people interested in top jobs spend inordinate efforts promoting themselves and getting people close to the nominee to promote them. This is already occurring with all of the well-connected Wall Street–oriented candidates for the top Biden economic jobs.
The progressive community needs to weigh in big-time. And just as important, Joe Biden himself needs to start thinking outside the box. His world is far too clubby. It needs some fresh progressive energy.
