WASHINGTON — Nearly each dwelling economist who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a Republican administration — together with the three chairs underneath President Donald J. Trump — signed a letter urging Congress to verify President Biden’s new nominee to guide the council, Jared Bernstein.
The letter, obtained by The New York Times, praises Mr. Bernstein for partaking with economists throughout ideological traces and for his work drafting the unique proposal for the chance zones program that was included within the 2017 tax package deal that Mr. Trump signed into legislation.
The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to carry a listening to on Mr. Bernstein’s nomination on Tuesday. Democrats had frightened about his possibilities of clearing a committee vote after Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was hospitalized in February for therapy of melancholy. They had stepped up efforts to court docket Republican senators to assist Mr. Bernstein. Mr. Fetterman has since returned to work within the Senate.
Mr. Bernstein has been a member of the council because the begin of Mr. Biden’s administration. The president tapped him this 12 months to succeed Cecilia Rouse, who stepped down on the finish of final month to return to her publish at Princeton University. Before then, Mr. Bernstein was an adviser to Mr. Biden when he was the vice chairman, a longtime fixture at liberal suppose tanks in Washington and a frequent sparring companion with conservative economists on cable news.
He additionally labored with Kevin Hassett, a conservative economist who went on to move the council underneath Mr. Trump, to draft a white paper for the Economic Innovation Group suppose tank a couple of novel effort meant to steer funding to impoverished components of the United States. Those have been the so-called alternative zones, which have been included within the 2017 tax legislation.
The program designates areas in each state the place buyers in actual property, working companies or different tasks are eligible for vital tax benefits, together with probably not having to pay capital positive aspects taxes on income from their investments in these areas. Republicans have championed the zones because the legislation was handed. Some critics, together with in Washington suppose tanks, have criticized them for delivering investments to some areas that have been already gentrifying quickly. Recent analysis has proven a widening share of zones attracting funding within the years since they have been established.
Mr. Hassett, who spearheaded the letter to members of the banking committee on Mr. Bernstein’s behalf, and his fellow former heads of the council cited the concept for the zones as one instance of Mr. Bernstein’s outside-the-box pondering on economics.
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Mr. Bernstein has “established a reputation for producing informative, data-driven analysis and developing creative policy ideas,” the previous heads of the council wrote.
Along with Mr. Hassett, two different appearing heads of the council underneath Mr. Trump signed the letter: Tomas Phillipson and Tyler Goodspeed. Other signatories included Michael J. Boskin, who led the council underneath President George H.W. Bush, and three former chairs underneath President George W. Bush: Ben S. Bernanke, N. Gregory Mankiw and R. Glenn Hubbard.
Mr. Hassett stated he had been unable to succeed in the one different dwelling previous chair of the council underneath a Republican, Alan Greenspan, to ask him to signal the letter.
In an interview, Mr. Hassett praised Mr. Bernstein’s collegiality and prompt that he would proceed a bipartisan custom of council chairs looking for recommendation from their predecessors from each political events.
“I disagree with Jared about a lot, and Jared and I have been disagreeing about things for 20 years,” Mr. Hassett stated. “But he really is a fundamentally good person who tries to figure things out with an open mind, and who changes his mind.”
Source: www.nytimes.com