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The Ezra Klein Show

The Best Explanation of Biden's Thinking I’ve Heard

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, the economic theory that is Bidenomics is taking shape. It’s big. It puts climate at the center of everything. It is more worried about political risks — losing the House, giving Donald Trump a path back to power — than some traditional economic risks, like wasting money and bumping up inflation. It prefers to err on the side of spending more and making sure people know they got a bridge or a job than doing less and having people question whether government is working for them. But I still have a lot of questions about Bidenomics, in terms of both its economic theories and its political ones. Brian Deese is the director of the National Economic Council, the nerve center that coordinates economic policy across the executive branch. He led the auto bailout in the Obama administration and then turned to climate, first in the Obama White House and then at BlackRock. When President Biden brought him on to run the N.E.C., it was a message: In the Biden administration, all economics was going to be climate economics. I asked Deese to join me on the podcast to talk about how his economic policymaking and thinking have changed since 2009, what the Biden administration learned from the successes and failures of the Obama era, why so much of the White House’s economic policy is framed in terms of competition with China, why he doesn’t think a carbon tax is the right answer for climate, how the Biden administration will invest in the care economy and more. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Mr. Klein and this is the Asura Klein Show.

0:18.9

I have covered Joe Biden for decades now.

0:21.9

I covered him as a senator, covered him as vice president, I covered him as a participant

0:27.9

in the Democratic Party's searching, traumatized post-Trump debates about which direction

0:32.3

to go, and I covered him twice as a presidential candidate.

0:36.5

And I thought I had a pretty good handle on him, but I would not have predicted this presidency,

0:40.4

I would not have predicted these bills.

0:43.1

The American Rescue Plan was a $1.9 trillion bill that aired really heavily on the side

0:48.9

of doing more.

0:50.4

That is not a hallmark of Joe Biden's career up until now.

0:54.1

But maybe you could say, well, it's a coronavirus emergency.

0:57.1

It's not changed everything.

0:58.1

Well, coronavirus doesn't explain the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan that just came out.

1:03.3

This is not a coronavirus bill.

1:05.0

It is not fixing problems caused by a pandemic.

1:07.9

This is a searing critique of the pre-pandemic economy.

1:11.2

Its provisions amount to an argument that the economy we had before the pandemic was a

1:17.0

calamity for people and for the planet.

1:19.4

The status quo ante was a disaster.

1:22.2

And by implication, Democrats very much including Joe Biden, who had a hand in building it.

1:27.0

Had been too slow to recognize its problems and much too timid in facing them.

1:31.6

I like to say that every president is an emergent property.

...

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