Lael Brainard and Jared Bernstein hired by president Biden, part of his economic team
Washington, D.C. President Biden has named Lael Brainard as the new director of the National Economic Council (NEC) and is nominating Jared Bernstein as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). He is doing this to strengthen his economic team after a number of departures and before high-pressure talks about the debt ceiling and government spending.
Brainard, who is currently vice chair of the Federal Reserve, will take over for Brian Deese, who announced earlier this month that he was leaving the White House administration. Bernstein is taking over as the president’s chief economist from Cecilia Rouse. The two councils are in charge of economic analysis and policy making inside the White House.
Brainard will be only the second woman to lead the NEC. During her career, she has worked at the Treasury Department, the NEC, the CEA, and the Federal Reserve. In a statement announcing the appointment, Mr. Biden said that she is “a trusted veteran across our economic institutions” who “understands how the economy affects everyday people.”
Bernstein has worked for Biden for a long time, even when he was vice president, and is now a member of the CEA. “One of my closest and most experienced economic advisers,” the president said of him, “he is a brilliant thinker.”
The moves come as the White House gets ready for a showdown over the country’s borrowing limit. The U.S. has until around June to raise or suspend the limit or risk a disastrous default. Mr. Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy talked for the first time since McCarthy took office two weeks ago. However, the two sides are still far from coming to an agreement.
On Tuesday, the president named several other people to important economic jobs in his administration. Bharat Ramamurti, who is currently the deputy director of the NEC, will now be an adviser for strategic economic communications, and CEA member Heather Boushey will be the chief economist for the president’s “Invest in America Cabinet.” Joelle Gamble, who is the head economist at the Department of Labor, was also named as the NEC’s deputy director by the president.
“Along with Bharat, Heather, Joelle, and other key members of my White House economic team, Lael and Jared will bring a seriousness of purpose to the task of building a strong, inclusive, and more resilient economy for the future,” Mr. Biden said in his statement. “In the past two years, my plan for the economy has helped the American people in ways that have never been seen before. This team will work hard to put that strategy into action while also managing the change from our historic economic recovery to steady and stable growth. They will work hard to make sure that every American gets a fair pay for their work and an equal chance to get ahead, and that our businesses can thrive and beat out the rest of the world. Let’s get the job done.”
The changes come as Mr. Biden heads into the second half of his term and faces a number of other economic problems. Inflation slowed in January, but not as quickly as economists thought it would, according to data released by the government on Tuesday. Job growth has also stayed strong, making it less likely that there will be a recession and making it more likely that interest rates will stay high.
Recent polling by CBS News shows that Americans’ views of the economy have gotten a little better, but they still don’t like it. And people all over the country don’t agree on where the economy will go from here.
