Struggling Biden Economics Team Members to Focus on Families

WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday introduced six key members of his economic team to the country. Together, they form a diverse group of experts whose personal stories and economic philosophies represent a radical departure from the past four years of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“This is a family oriented team,” Biden said at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, featuring the nominees. “This team will always be there for you and your families.”

Indeed, family was the constant, albeit unexpected, theme that ran through each of the six speeches given by the nominees on Tuesday.

Biden’s economic advisers described how their early experiences of hardship became windows through which they still view economic policy as accomplished economists.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, Biden’s candidate for Treasury secretary, described how her father, a family doctor, treated patients in the basement of their home in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn.

At night, she says, her father would talk about “what the job meant to his patients, our friends and neighbors. Especially if they lost a job, financial problems, family problems, health problems, loss of dignity and self. is worth. “

Yellen added, “I became an economist because I was concerned about the cost of unemployment on individuals, families and communities.”

Neera Tanden, a veteran Democratic political adviser Biden selected to head the Office of Management and Budget, described how her single mother, an Indian immigrant, relied on food stamps to feed her two daughters and housing vouchers from section 8 to pay the rent.

“I am here today thanks to the courage of my mother, but also thanks to the country which trusted us, which invested in its humanity and in our dreams. I am here today because of social programs, because of budget choices, because of a government that saw my mother’s dignity and gave her a chance, ”Tanden said.

Stories like those of Tanden and Yellen were also striking because of their profound difference from the experiences and biographies of Trump’s first list of economic advisers, announced days after the president’s upset victory in the 2016 election.

Made up entirely of white men, Trump’s team of financial advisers was heavily biased towards Wall Street barons and billionaires.

“I want people who have made their fortunes,” Trump said in late 2016, explaining his presidential hiring preferences. More than anything, however, Trump has said he does not believe that a “poor person” can be an effective economic adviser. He wanted rich people to run the economy “because that’s the kind of thinking we want”.

There was nothing of that “kind of thought” on display Tuesday in Wilmington. Instead, the focus has been on the experiences of immigrants, marginalized groups and unionized workers.

Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, former deputy director of the National Economic Council and Biden’s candidate for assistant secretary of the treasury, told how his immigrant parents came from Nigeria to America.

Adeyemo described how her parents, “an elementary school principal and nurse, came to America to build a better life for me and my siblings. They taught us that we have a responsibility to serve our community and country that has given us so many opportunities, “he said.

Cecilia Rouse, Princeton economist and choice of Biden to lead the Council of Economic Advisors, described how her first college economics course coincided with a deep recession in the early 1980s. “It was impossible for me to separate what we were learning from what I knew was going on in cities across the country, ”she said.

Biden’s longtime economic adviser Jared Bernstein, on the verge of joining CEA, recalled being raised by a single mother who kept a picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the wall.

Heather Boushey, another Biden choice to join the CEA, spoke last. She recounted how her father was fired from his job at Boeing in the 1980s. “For the first time, I really experienced this pain called the economy,” she said.

“I was struck by the deep power this mysterious force held over my life, my friends and my community,” Boushey said.

Biden is expected to name several other key White House positions in the coming weeks.