Presidential Election of 2024

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    Wrestling With Inequality, Some Conservatives Redraw Economic Blueprint

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    A growing number of Republican politicians and theorists are challenging party orthodoxy on pocketbook issues, corporate power and government’s role.More Republicans are coming to the view that economic inequality, or a lack of social mobility, is a problem in the United States — and that more can be done to enable families to attain or regain a middle-class life.Though discussions about inequality tend to be most visible among liberals, about four in 10 Republican or Republican-leaning adults think there is too much economic inequality in the country, according to a Pew Research survey. And among Republicans making less than about $40,000 a year who see too much economic inequality, 63 percent agree that the economic system “requires major changes” to address it.But a growing debate among conservative thinkers, politicians and the party base — online, in books and in public forums — reveals a group divided about how, in practice, to address pocketbook issues and the extent to which the government should be involved.“I don’t think just having a bigger government is a solution to a lot of these problems,” said Inez Stepman, a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and a fellow with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank widely credited with giving Trumpism an intellectual framework. “But I do think that we could stand to think a little bit more on the right about how to make that 1950s middle-class life possible for people.”These yearnings and ideological stirrings have picked up as both whites without college degrees and the broader working class have grown as a share of Republican voters. (Hillary Clinton won college-educated white voters by 17 percentage points in her 2016 race against Donald J. Trump; four years earlier, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, carried that group.)A notable swipe against longtime Republican economic thinking has come from Sohrab Ahmari, a conservative who served as an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal and the opinion editor of The New York Post. The metamorphosis of his worldview is laid out in a recently published book, “Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What to Do About It.”“I was writing editorials preaching the gospel of low taxes, free trade, et cetera,” Mr. Ahmari said in an interview. But Mr. Trump’s election inspired him to research how “American life in general for the lower rungs of the labor market is unbelievably precarious,” he said, and his politics changed.Mr. Ahmari recently endorsed a second term for Mr. Trump, but he has written that “while ferociously conservative on cultural issues,” he is also “increasingly drawn to the economic policies of the left — figures like Senators Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.”In their own ways, Republican presidential primary candidates are jostling for ways to validate the populist energy and financial unease that Mr. Trump tapped into with a mix of pronouncements and policy promises. Some have set out economic goals that, according to many experts, are hard to square with their promises to reduce public debt and taxes and make deep cuts to government programs — especially now that many Republicans have backed away from calls to cut entitlement benefits.In a campaign speech in New Hampshire this summer called “A Declaration of Economic Independence,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican presidential contender, sharply critiqued China, diversity programming, “excessive regulation and excessive taxes” — a familiar set of modern conservative concerns. Yet he also echoed complaints and economic goals often heard from the left.“We want to be a country where you can raise a family on one sole income,” he told the crowd.“We cannot have policy that kowtows to the largest corporations and Wall Street at the expense of small businesses and average Americans,” he added. “There’s a difference between a free-market economy, which we want, and corporatism.”Critics on the left and the right argue that Mr. DeSantis has failed to clearly define how he would achieve those goals. The DeSantis campaign declined to comment for this article, but he has cited pathways to broader prosperity that include bringing industrial jobs back from abroad, increasing work force education and technical training, removing “red tape” faced by small businesses and aiming for annual U.S. economic growth of at least 3 percent.Though the fissures on the right over economic issues were evident when Mr. Trump upended the political scene eight years ago, the realignments are maturing and deepening, causing fresh tensions as factions disagree on the extent to which inequality, globalization and growing corporate power should be seen as problems.Some conservatives remain more concerned with the trajectory of federal spending and unlocking greater overall prosperity, rather than its distribution.Last year, Phil Gramm, a Republican who steered the passage of major tax cuts and deregulation during his time representing Texas in Congress from the 1970s to the early 2000s, published a book with his fellow economists Robert Ekelund and John Early called “The Myth of American Inequality.” The book — filled with alternative tabulations of impoverishment and living standards — argues that inequality is not high and rising as “the mainstream” suggests.It argues that when including welfare transfers, income inequality has been more stable than government figures suggest, and that the share of Americans living in poverty fell from 15 percent in 1967 to only 1.1 percent in 2017.“The point of the book is to get the facts straight,” Mr. Gramm said in an interview, adding that “we’re having these debates” with numbers that are “verifiably false.” (Some scholars have vehemently disagreed with the authors’ analysis.)Scott Lincicome, a vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that he largely agreed with Mr. Gramm’s thesis and that Americans were mostly wrestling with “keeping up with the Joneses,” not a loss of economic traction.“In general, folks at the bottom, up to the median, are doing better,” Mr. Lincicome concluded. “They’re not winning the game, but they’re doing better than the same group was 30-plus years ago.”He added: “You know, economists can debate all day long whether we’re better off, worse off overall or whatever. But when you factor in all the factors, I personally think things are fine.”To the extent that these debates have popular reach, the most public face of the revisionist camp may be Oren Cass, an adviser to Mr. Romney’s 2012 campaign, who has become immersed in a collective project among some right-leaning thinkers to “rebuild capitalism.”Mr. Cass and his allies want to use government spending and power to promote economic mobility with traditionalist goals in mind — like reducing the cost of living for the heads of married, two-parent households.Mr. Cass praised Mr. Ahmari’s book as one that “bravely goes where few conservatives dare tread, to the ideologically fraught realm in which the market appears inherently coercive and capitalism appears in tension with economic freedom.” (Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, is talking at a book event with Mr. Ahmari this month at the National Press Club in Washington.)Many economists and political scientists contend that the ideological realignment on the right is overblown, confused with a broader, hard-to-quantify loyalty to Mr. Trump rather than an explicit ideology giving life to Trumpism.“In a way,” Mr. Ahmari said, his critics — “the people who say, ‘Yeah, sure, you’re just a couple of guys: you, Oren, and a few others at magazines and think tanks’” — are “not wrong institutionally,” as there is little donor support for their efforts.“But they are wrong in terms of voters,” he added.Ms. Stepman of the Claremont Institute says she is personally “more traditional right” than thinkers like Mr. Ahmari but agrees they are tapping into something real. “There is a very underserved part of the political spectrum that is genuinely left of center on economic issues, right of center on cultural issues,” she said, pointing to issues including immigration, gun laws, education, gender norms and more.Gabe Guidarini is one of them.Growing up in Lake Bluff, Ill., in a working-class household where MSNBC often played in the background at night, Mr. Guidarini felt his view that “the status quo in this country is corrupt” was validated by the “anti-establishment” voices of both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump. But he came to the view that “you can’t get away with” social views that stray from progressive orthodoxy and still be accepted by Democrats. Now, at 19, he is the president of the University of Dayton College Republicans.In 2022, he worked as a campaign intern for J.D. Vance — the author of “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” who aligned himself with Trumpism after his 2016 book was credited for providing a “reference guide” for Mr. Trump’s electoral success. Mr. Vance, an Ohio Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate.In line with Tucker Carlson and some other conservatives, Mr. Guidarini thinks the party “should be taking policy samples from Viktor Orban in Hungary, and what he’s doing with family policies that aim to increase family creation, increase childbirth and make it easier to live a decent life as a working or middle-class taxpayer,” he said. “That’s what’s going to return the American dream for so many people, because to young people — and I feel like a lot of other people in America today — the American dream feels dead.”Mr. Guidarini, like many on the right, is wary of achieving those goals by increasing taxes on the wealthy. But according to Pew Research, more Republican or Republican-leaning adults support raising tax rates for those with incomes over $400,000 (46 percent) than say those rates should go unchanged (29 percent) or be lowered (24 percent). And more than half of low-income Republicans support higher taxes on the highest earners.For now, though, all economic debates are “tangential,” said Saagar Enjeti, a conservative millennial who is a co-host of two podcasts that often feature competing voices across the right.“‘What are we going to do when the Trump tax cuts expire?’ These are not the fights that are happening,” Mr. Enjeti said. “I wish they were, but they’re not. They’re just not.”With consensus on policy solutions elusive and “the culture wars” in the campaign forefront, Mr. Enjeti said, Republicans will mostly rally around what he believes will be Mr. Trump’s simple economic message: “Make America 2019 Again” — a time when unemployment, inflation and mortgage rates were low and, for all of life’s challenges, at least cultural conservatives were in the White House. More

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    On the Economy, Biden Struggles to Convince Voters of His Success

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    Wages are up, inflation has slowed and the White House has a new slogan. Still, President Biden’s poor marks on the economy are making Democrats worried.When a chant slamming President Biden spread from a NASCAR race to T-shirts and bumper stickers across red America two years ago, the White House pulled off perhaps its savviest messaging feat to date. Biden aides and allies repackaged the “Let’s Go Brandon” insult and morphed it into “Dark Brandon,” a celebratory meme casting Mr. Biden as some sort of omnipotent mastermind.Now, the White House and the Biden campaign is several weeks into another appropriation play — but it isn’t going nearly as well. Aides in July announced that the president would run for re-election on the virtues of “Bidenomics,” proudly reclaiming the right’s derisive term for Mr. Biden’s economic policies.The gambit does not appear to be working yet. Even as Mr. Biden presides over what is by all indicators a strong economy — one on track to dodge the recession many had feared — he is still struggling to convince most of the country of the strength of his economic stewardship. Wages are up, inflation has slowed, but credit to the president remains in short supply.Polling last month from the Democratic organization Navigator found that 25 percent of Americans support Mr. Biden’s major actions, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, but still think the president is doing a poor job handling the economy. It’s a group that tends to be disproportionately younger than 40 and is more likely to be Black or Latino — voters critical to Democratic victories.“This is the thing that’s vexing all Democrats,” said Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Center for American Progress.Democratic economists, pollsters and officials have a variety of explanations for why voters don’t credit Mr. Biden for the economy. Inflation remains elevated, and interest rates have made home buying difficult. There is also evidence that voters’ views on the economy are shaped as much by their political views as by personal experiences.And then there is the regular refrain that people don’t know about Mr. Biden’s successes. Even Mr. Biden’s supporters say that he and his administration have been too reluctant to promote their record and ineffective when they do.“I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.Mr. Biden on Friday attempted another victory lap in a White House speech celebrating the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work. He credited the heart of his economic plan, including investment in infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing and climate-related industries along with caps on the price of insulin medication.Bidenomics, Mr. Biden said, “is about investing in America and investing in Americans.”Mr. Biden said his economic plan was to credit for the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesThe term Bidenomics emerged as a pejorative in conservative media and has been widely adopted by Mr. Biden’s rivals. “One of the most important issues of the campaign will be who can rescue our country from the burning wreckage of Bidenomics,” former President Donald J. Trump said in a recent video, “which shall henceforth be defined as inflation, taxation submission and failure.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida offered his definition at a recent campaign stop in Rock Rapids, Iowa. “Bidenomics is basically: You have a lower standard of living so he can pursue the left’s ideological agenda,” he said.Behind the rhetoric, there is some debate over whether the economy will be the driving force it has been in past presidential elections. Some Democrats argue that their party’s resilience in last year’s midterm elections showed that the fight over abortion rights and Mr. Trump’s influence over Republicans can trounce more kitchen-table concerns.The White House argues that Democrats’ strong showing last year is a sign the Mr. Biden’s electoral performance isn’t strictly tied to the economy.“By all metrics, his economic record has improved since then,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.Still, nearly all of Mr. Biden’s campaign advertising this year sells his economic record. The ads — which don’t use the term Bidenomics — cast the president’s policies as a work in progress. “All of the things that Biden fought to get passed helped the middle class,” a cement mason from Milwaukee says in an ad the campaign released last week.“It’s no secret that a lot of Americans are struggling with the cost of living, and that’s a reality that shapes their views about the economy more broadly,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster who conducts surveys for the Democratic National Committee.Explaining why Mr. Biden’s policies will help, Mr. Garin said, “is what campaigns are for.”This summer Mr. Biden has promoted “Bidenomics” at events around the country, often speaking in factories or with labor groups. Even some in friendly audiences of local Democratic leaders and supporters questioned whether his emphasis would resonate with the coalition that elected him in 2020.“Is Bidenomics the right thing to sell?” Mayor Katie Rosenberg of Wausau, Wis., said after seeing Mr. Biden speak in Milwaukee last month. “I just keep thinking, why aren’t they just doing Build Back Better still? That was a really good slogan. Bidenomics is just an effort to capitalize on the negativity around him.”Build Back Better, the mix of economic, climate and social policy that Mr. Biden ran on in 2020, was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of Mr. Biden’s ambitions as president. Significant elements became law, but the branding exercise failed, doomed in part by rising inflation.Mr. Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of his ambitions as president.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDemocrats rebranded their climate legislation as the Inflation Reduction Act, even though the bill had little to do with inflation. Even Mr. Biden recently said that he regretted the name, suggesting that it promised something the bill was not devised to deliver.Though the rate of inflation has slowed, it remains the chief drag on Mr. Biden’s economic approval ratings, said Joanne Hsu, the director of Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan.“We track people who have heard negative news about inflation,” Dr. Hsu said. “Over the past year, that number has been much higher than in the 1970s and ’80s, when inflation was so much worse.”One theme of Mr. Biden’s aides, advisers and allies is to plead for time. The economy will get better, more people will hear and understand what Bidenomics means and credit will accrue to the president, they say.“The public more and more is going to be seeing low unemployment and will continue to get more bullish on the economy,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board. “But I also understand it’s very hard for people now. We just can’t expect overnight for people to feel better about the economy.”For most Americans, their views on the economy are directly tied to their partisan leanings — a phenomenon that is particularly acute for Republicans. In 2016, before Mr. Trump took office, just 18 percent of Republicans rated the economy excellent or good, according to a Pew Research survey. By February 2020, just before the pandemic shut down public life in America, 81 percent of Republicans said the economy was excellent or good.An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found just 8 percent of Republicans, along with 65 percent of Democrats, approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy.Mr. Biden’s sympathizers say part of his problem on the economy is an unwillingness to promote its bright spots out of fear of seeming insensitive to Americans struggling with higher prices. Mr. Trump had no such restraint, describing the economy as the best in history and the envy of the world. Using “Bidenomics” as a framework lets the president take ownership of the economy, but it doesn’t exactly tell voters that the economy is great.“Trump chose people who were probably less experienced in terms of making policy, but some of them are quite good about talking up the president,” said Ben Harris, a former top Treasury official in the Biden administration who played a leading role in outlining the Build Back Better agenda during the 2020 campaign. “Biden’s taken a more modest and humble approach, and there’s a chance that’s come back to haunt him.”Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, said there was a regular debate in that White House about how much to sell the public on the idea that the economy was improving even if people didn’t feel in their own lives.Now he said it was difficult for the Biden administration to take victory laps over slowing inflation because wages haven’t kept pace, leaving a typical worker about $2,000 behind compared with before the pandemic.“The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Mr. Furman said. “The fact that you protected people in the bad times means the good times don’t feel as good.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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    Strong Economic Data Buoys Biden, but Many Voters Are Still Sour

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    Voters continue to rate the president poorly on economic issues, but there are signs the national mood is beginning to improve.President Biden and his aides are basking in what is arguably the best run of economic data to date in his presidency. Inflation is cooling, business investment is rising, job growth is powering on and surveys suggest rising economic optimism among consumers and voters.Polls still show Mr. Biden remains underwater on his handling of the economy, with voters more likely to disapprove of his performance than approve of it. Yet there are signs that voters may be brightening their assessment of the economy under Mr. Biden, in part thanks to the mounting effects of the infrastructure, manufacturing and climate bills he has signed into law.The run of positive economic news comes as his administration looks to credit “Bidenomics” for a sustained run of positive data.The economy grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter of the year, handily beating economists’ expectations, the Commerce Department reported last week. Price growth slowed in June even as consumer spending picked up. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of year-over-year inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, has now fallen to 3 percent this year from about 7 percent last June — easing the pressure on Mr. Biden from the economic problem that has bedeviled his presidency thus far.And in less visible but significant ways, there are signs that Mr. Biden’s signature economic policies may be starting to bear fruit, most notably in a steep rise in factory construction. Government data released Tuesday showed that boom continued in June, with spending on manufacturing facilities up nearly 80 percent over the previous year. The manufacturing sector as a whole has added nearly 800,000 jobs since Mr. Biden took office and now employs the most people since 2008.“The public policy changes that have been put in place over the past two years are now starting to show up in the data,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. He said the increased investment was “undoubtedly linked” to government policies, in particular the CHIPS Act, which aimed to promote domestic manufacturing, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which targeted low-emission energy technologies to combat climate change.As Mr. Biden gears up for his re-election campaign, perhaps what is most encouraging to him is that consumer confidence is rising to levels not seen since the early months of his tenure in the White House, before inflation surged. Measures by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board suggest consumers have grown happier with the current state of the economy and more hopeful about the year ahead.That change in attitude may reflect an underlying economic reality: The combination of cooling inflation, low unemployment and rising pay means that American workers are seeing their standard of living improve. Hourly wages outpaced price gains in the spring for the first time in two years, giving consumers more purchasing power.National opinion polls still show a sour economic mood — but it appears to be improving slightly.In a new New York Times/Siena College poll, 49 percent of respondents rated the economy as “poor,” compared with 20 percent who called it “excellent” or “good.” That’s an improvement from last summer, when 58 percent of Americans in another Times/Siena poll called the economy “poor” and just 10 percent rated it “excellent” or “good.”Administration officials attribute the economy’s strength, particularly in the labor market, to the direct aid to individuals, businesses and state and local governments that was included in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Mr. Biden signed into law in 2021.Economists generally blame that same stimulus package for some of the rapid spike in inflation that ensued largely after its passage. But the recent moderation in price growth is emboldening officials to cite the bill as more of a positive factor, saying it helped keep consumers spending and businesses operating, speeding the return to a low unemployment rate.“The American Rescue Plan was designed for both getting the economy back up and running but making sure there was enough wiggle room to deal with challenges that could come down the pipeline,” Heather Boushey, a member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “And that has been, I think, very, very successful in getting people back to work. This has been the sharpest recovery in decades, in terms of job creation. We have outperformed our economic competitors.”Economic officials inside and outside the administration warn that risks remain as policymakers seek to achieve a so-called soft landing, bringing down sky-high inflation without triggering a recession. And many Republicans dispute the president’s claims that his policies have bolstered the economy. They note that inflation remains well above historical averages and that for many American workers, wage gains under Mr. Biden have failed to keep pace with rising prices.“Even if inflation ‘is less,’ those prices are not going down,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, told Fox News this week. For a middle-class family, “affording a home is prohibitive,” he said. “If you look at the median income compared to the median home price, there’s a bigger gap than there was when the financial crisis hit after the big housing increase in 2006 and 2007. Cars are becoming less affordable; people feel that squeeze.”Some forecasters, including at the Conference Board, continue to predict the economy will fall into recession by the end of the year. They cite indicators that have frequently signaled downturns in the past, most notably the rapid decline in lending from both small and large banks.Tightening credit conditions, as reported this week by the Fed, “are consistent with G.D.P. growth slowing to recession territory in coming quarters,” researchers at BNP Paribas wrote this week.Yet most independent economists agree that the U.S. recovery has been stronger than expected. They are less united on how much credit Mr. Biden’s policies deserve for it. The decline in inflation, they say, is mostly the result of the Fed’s aggressive efforts to combat it, helped along by some good luck as oil prices have fallen and the pandemic’s disruptions have faded.Consumer confidence is rising to levels not seen since the early months of Mr. Biden’s presidency.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe resilience of the labor market — and the strength of the broader economy — is almost certainly the result, at least in part, of the trillions of dollars of aid that the federal government pumped into the economy in 2020 and 2021, which helped prevent the widespread bankruptcies, foreclosures and business failures that stymied the recovery from the Great Recession a decade and a half ago. But much of that came under President Donald J. Trump, and economists disagree about how much Mr. Biden’s stimulus package specifically helped the recovery.Still, recent economic developments have seemed to bear out one of the arguments that Democrats made early in Mr. Biden’s term: that the risks of doing too little to help the economy outweighed the risks of doing too much. Too little aid could leave the U.S. economy facing another “lost decade” of slow growth similar to the one that followed the last recession. Too much aid might cause inflation — but that, unlike slow growth, is a problem the Fed knows how to solve.Risks remain in the months to come. Inflation could pick back up, particularly if oil prices continue to rise, as they have in recent weeks. The job market could deteriorate, leading to a sharp rise in unemployment. Many forecasters still expect a recession to begin this year or early next.Drawing a straight line from government policies to economic outcomes is always difficult, especially in real time. But recent economic data has, at the very least, looked consistent with the Biden administration’s theory of how its policies would affect the economy.Administration officials point in particular at what they have begun referring to as the “hockey-stick graph”: a steep upward climb in investment in factory construction over the past two years, which they attribute to spending and tax incentives in several bills that Mr. Biden championed and signed into law. Those include bipartisan measures to boost infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, and a bill passed last year by Democrats when they controlled Congress that focused heavily on spurring new development in low-emission energy technologies to combat climate change.Private-sector analysts have largely agreed that policies have played a significant — though hard to quantify — role in the manufacturing construction boom in recent months. That, in turn, has helped to fuel a surprising increase in business investment more broadly, which helped lift economic growth in the spring even as consumer spending slowed.Even Treasury officials acknowledge significant risks to the economy in the months to come. Privately, many of Mr. Biden’s aides express at least some uncertainty about whether a soft landing is now assured.But the combination of solid growth, low unemployment and cooling inflation has made forecasters increasingly optimistic that the United States can avoid a recession that many of them once thought was inevitable.“You’ve got to look at that and say the probability of a soft landing has gone up,” said Jay Bryson, chief economist at Wells Fargo. More

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    Why Ron DeSantis Is Taking Aim at the Federal Reserve

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    Florida’s governor has been blasting Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, while spreading misinformation about central bank digital currency.WASHINGTON — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is preparing to take a widely anticipated leap into a 2024 presidential campaign, appears to have discovered something that populists throughout history have found to be true: Bashing the Federal Reserve is good politics.Mr. DeSantis has begun to criticize Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, in speeches and news conferences. He has alleged without evidence that the Biden administration is about to introduce a central bank digital currency — which neither the White House nor the politically independent Fed has decided to do — in a bid to surveil Americans and control their spending on gas. He has quoted the Fed’s Twitter posts disparagingly.His critiques echo a familiar playbook from the Trump administration. Former President Donald J. Trump often blasted the central bank during the 2016 campaign and while he was in office, as policymakers lifted interest rates and slowed economic growth. Mr. Trump at one point called Mr. Powell — his own pick for Fed chair — an “enemy,” comparing him to President Xi Jinping of China.Because the central bank is responsible for controlling inflation, it is often blamed both for periods of rapid price increases and for the economic damage it inflicts when it raises rates to bring that inflation under control. That can make it an easy political target.And populist skepticism of government control of money dates back centuries in America. The nation’s first and second attempts at creating a central bank failed partly because of such concerns. The Fed, set up in 1913, was designed as a decentralized institution with quasi-private branches dotted around the country in part to avoid concentrating too much power in one place. It has been the subject of conspiracy theories and political attacks ever since.“In many ways, it is not surprising at all,” said Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University who has studied politics and the Fed. Mr. DeSantis is placing himself to Mr. Trump’s right, she said, “and it sounds like many populist right-side critiques of the Fed, of monetary control, that we’ve heard throughout history.”Mr. Powell has stated that the Fed “would not proceed” on a digital currency “without support from Congress.”T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWhile Mr. DeSantis’s Fed-bashing is not new, some of his remarks have strayed into misinformation, said Peter Conti-Brown, a lawyer and Fed historian at the University of Pennsylvania.“The Fed can and should take this seriously,” Mr. Conti-Brown said.While the Fed is independent of and largely insulated from the White House, it does ultimately answer to Congress. And a lack of popular support could curb the Fed’s room to maneuver: If the government decided that pursuing a digital currency was a good idea, for instance, the backlash could make it more difficult to do so.Mr. DeSantis’s tone could also offer hints about the future. Starting from the early 1990s, presidential administrations have largely respected the Fed’s independence, avoiding commenting on monetary policy. Mr. Trump upended that tradition. President Biden has returned to a hands-off approach, but the recent criticism offers an early hint that the détente may not last if a Republican wins in 2024.Mr. DeSantis has faulted Mr. Powell’s policies for failing to control inflation, recently calling the Fed chair a “complete disaster.”In Mr. Powell, the potential presidential candidate has a rare opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden simultaneously: The Fed leader was first nominated to the central bank by President Barack Obama, then made chair by Mr. Trump and renominated as chair by Mr. Biden.Mr. DeSantis has focused much of his attention on a central bank digital currency, or C.B.D.C., which would operate like electronic cash but with backing from the federal government. The Fed has been researching both the potential uses and technical feasibility of a digital currency, but has not yet decided to issue one. Mr. Powell has made clear that the Fed “would not proceed with this without support from Congress.”The digital money that Americans use today — whether they are swiping a credit card or completing a Venmo transaction — is issued by banks. Physical cash, by contrast, comes directly from the Fed. A central bank digital currency would effectively be the digital version of a dollar bill.Many people who think the Fed should seriously consider issuing a central bank digital currency suggest that it could help improve access to banking services. Some have argued that it is important to develop the technology: America’s global competitors, including China, are researching and issuing digital money, so there is a risk of falling behind.Yet critics have worried about the privacy concerns of a centralized digital dollar. And the dollar is the most important reserve currency in the world, so any technological issues with a digital offering could be catastrophic. That is why the Fed has pledged to proceed carefully — and why the idea of issuing a digital currency in America is only in its formative research stages.Though there is no plan to issue a digital currency, Mr. DeSantis on March 20 proposed state legislation to “protect Floridians from the Biden administration’s weaponization of the financial sector through a central bank digital currency.”He then warned during an April 1 speech, with no factual basis, that Democrats wanted to use a digital currency to “impose an E.S.G. agenda,” referring to environmental and social goals like curbing consumption of fossil fuels or tightening gun control.Mr. DeSantis “is heading off any attempt to control people’s behavior through centralized digital currency,” his press secretary, Bryan Griffin, said in response to a request for comment.Mr. DeSantis’s claims echo those on right-wing social media, and they are in line with the interests of important Republican donors: Many banks and cryptocurrency firms are adamantly opposed to the idea of a central bank digital currency, worried that it would take away business.Florida, in particular, has been friendly to the digital currency industry, with lawmakers passing favorable legislation.And people with stakes in cryptocurrency are among Mr. DeSantis’s top political donors. Kenneth Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund executive and crypto skeptic turned advocate, gave $5 million to a political action committee that supported Mr. DeSantis’s 2022 re-election. Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire investor who had significant shares in the now-bankrupt crypto trading platform FTX, contributed $850,000 to the group, according to campaign finance filings.Nor is it just Mr. DeSantis who is expressing opposition to the idea of a central bank digital currency: Prominent Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have joined in.Mr. Cruz and Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the Republican whip, have introduced legislation to block the Fed from creating such a currency. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, another potential Republican presidential contender in 2024, recently vetoed a state bill that she claimed would have opened the door for a C.B.D.C.Some political figures are also incorrectly conflating a possible central bank digital currency with the central bank’s FedNow initiative, a separate effort to modernize America’s payment system to make transactions quicker and more efficient. A Fed spokesperson underlined that FedNow and the research into a possible digital currency were entirely different.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent figure in the anti-vaccine movement who recently announced his intention to run for president as a Democrat in 2024, wrongly conflated FedNow and the digital currency, claiming that it would “grease the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny.”Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate and representative from Hawaii who is now independent, echoed warnings that a digital currency would undermine freedom, incorrectly stating that the government “has just begun implementing” such a currency.Incorrect statements about FedNow and digital currency have proliferated on social media, spread by influential political figures as well as conspiracy theorists.The Fed has tried to push back on the swirling misinformation.“The FedNow Service is neither a form of currency nor a step toward eliminating any form of payment, including cash,” the central bank posted on Twitter on Friday. Its six-tweet F.A.Q. made no mention of politics, but nevertheless read like a rare public rebuke from an institution that diligently avoids wading into political commentary.“The Federal Reserve has made no decision on issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) & would not do so without clear support from Congress and executive branch, ideally in the form of a specific authorizing law,” the Fed said — in a tweet that Mr. DeSantis quoted.“It is not merely ‘ideal’ that major changes in policy receive specific authorization from Congress,” Mr. DeSantis said in a reply.By Tuesday afternoon, the Fed had updated its F.A.Q. online to be even more explicit: The central bank “would only proceed with the issuance of a CBDC with an authorizing law.” More

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    Jobs Report Bolsters Biden’s Economic Pitch, but Inflation Still Nags

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    WASHINGTON — Gradually slowing job gains and a growing labor force in March delivered welcome news to President Biden, nearly a year after he declared that the job market needed to cool significantly to tame high prices.The details of the report are encouraging for a president whose economic goal is to move from rapid job gains — and high inflation — to what Mr. Biden has called “stable, steady growth.” Job creation slowed to 236,000 for the month, closing in on the level Mr. Biden said last year would be necessary to stabilize the economy and prices. More Americans joined the labor force, and wage gains fell slightly. Those developments should help to further cool inflation.But the report also underscored the political and economic tensions for the president as he seeks to sell Americans on his economic stewardship ahead of an expected announcement this spring that he will seek re-election.Republicans criticized Mr. Biden for the deceleration in hiring and wage growth. Some analysts warned that after a year of consistently beating forecasters’ expectations, job growth appeared set to fall sharply or even turn negative in the coming months. That is in part because banks are pulling back lending after administration officials and the Federal Reserve intervened last month to head off a potential financial crisis.Surveys suggest that Americans’ views of the economy are improving, but that people remain displeased by its performance and pessimistic about its future. A CNN poll conducted in March and released this week showed that seven in 10 Americans rated the economy as somewhat or very poor. Three in five respondents expected the economy to be poor a year from now.As he tours the country in preparation for the 2024 campaign, Mr. Biden has built his economic pitch around a record rebound in job creation. He regularly visits factories and construction sites in swing states, casting corporate hiring promises as direct results of a White House legislative agenda that produced hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments in infrastructure, low-emission energy, semiconductor manufacturing and more.On Friday, the president took the same approach to the March employment data. “This is a good jobs report for hardworking Americans,” he said in a written statement, before listing seven states where companies this week have announced expansions that Mr. Biden linked to his agenda.But as he frequently does, Mr. Biden went on to caution that “there is more work to do” to bring down high prices that are squeezing workers and families.Aides were equally upbeat. Lael Brainard, who directs Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, told MSNBC that it was a “really nice” report overall.“Generally this report is consistent with steady and stable growth,” Ms. Brainard said. “We’re seeing some moderation — we’re certainly seeing reduction in inflation that has been quite welcome.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.But analysts warned that the coming months could bring a much more rapid deterioration in hiring, as banks pull back on lending in the wake of the government bailout of depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote Friday that he expected job gains to fall to just 50,000 in May, and for the economy to begin shedding jobs on a net basis over the summer. But he acknowledged that the job market continued to surprise analysts, in a good way, by pulling more and more workers back into the labor force.“Labor demand and supply are moving back into balance,” Mr. Shepherdson wrote.In May, Mr. Biden wrote that monthly job creation needed to fall from an average of 500,000 jobs to something closer to 150,000, a level that he said would be “consistent with a low unemployment rate and a healthy economy.”Since then, the president has had a complicated relationship with the labor market. Job creation has remained far stronger than many forecasters — and Mr. Biden himself — expected. That growth has delighted Mr. Biden’s political advisers and helped the economy avoid a recession. But it has been accompanied by inflation well above historical norms, which continues to hamstring consumers and dampen Mr. Biden’s approval ratings.The March report showed the political difficulty of reconciling those two economic realities. Analysts called the cooling in job and wage growth welcome signs for the Federal Reserve in its campaign to bring down inflation by raising interest rates.But that cooling included a decline of 1,000 manufacturing jobs, for which some groups blamed the Fed. “America’s factories continue to experience the destabilizing influence of rising interest rates,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a trade group. “The Federal Reserve must understand that its policies are undermining our global competitiveness.”Republicans blasted Mr. Biden for falling wage growth. “Average hourly wages continue to trend down even as inflation has wiped out any nominal wage gains for more than two years,” Tommy Pigott, rapid response director for the Republican National Committee, said in a news release.Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said the report showed that “small businesses and job creators are reacting to the dark clouds looming over the economy.”In his own release, Mr. Biden nodded to one of the clouds that could turn into an economic storm as soon as this summer: a standoff over raising the nation’s borrowing limit, which could result in a government default that throws millions of Americans out of work. Republicans have refused to budge unless Mr. Biden agrees to unspecified spending cuts.Mr. Biden has refused to negotiate directly over raising the limit. He closed his jobs report statement on Friday with a shot at congressional Republicans’ strategy. “I will stop those efforts to put our economy at risk,” he said. More

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    Biden Highlights Economic Investments Ahead of Expected 2024 Announcement

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    The president has warned that a strong economy could be weakened under Republican leadership, a point he and a host of advisers will make at 20 events across the country in the coming weeks.DURHAM, N.C. — President Biden visited North Carolina on Tuesday and said Republicans would undermine his administration’s gains on American manufacturing, as the president began to sharpen his political message ahead of an expected re-election announcement.Mr. Biden spoke at Wolfspeed, a semiconductor manufacturer that recently announced a $5 billion investment to expand operations in the state, a move that would create about 1,800 jobs, according to the White House. The company, based in North Carolina, has deals to supply the material to General Motors, among other buyers.But Mr. Biden’s visit was less about semiconductors than it was about making an argument that he sees as key to a re-election bid — essentially, that the American economy has recovered since the coronavirus pandemic, his administration has helped keep it strong and Republican policies would undo that progress.“I’ve got news for you and for MAGA Republicans in Congress: Not on my watch,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the far-right wing of the party that is loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.The White House has argued for months that Mr. Biden has presided over a steady economy and strong job growth, but the data presents a more complicated reality: The high pace of job creation is undercut by a continued deceleration in wage increases, and there are growing concerns that the Federal Reserve may move to raise interest rates. The Biden administration has also tried to assuage fears of instability after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this month.Mr. Biden’s visit to North Carolina was the start of three weeks of related events to be held across the country by the president and Vice President Kamala Harris, plus their spouses and a host of cabinet officials. The group plans to visit 20 states and will highlight investments in American manufacturing, supply chains and job-creation efforts, according to a summary of efforts sent by the White House.During his trip to Durham, Mr. Biden highlighted legislation passed last year, including the CHIPS and Science Act, which contains $52 billion in subsidies and tax credits for companies that manufacture chips in the United States. More than half of the amount is dedicated to helping companies build facilities for making, assembling and packaging some of the world’s more advanced chips. In his remarks, the president said that over $435 billion had been invested in American companies since he took office.“America’s coming back,” Mr. Biden said, standing beside Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, who traveled with him to Durham. “We are determined to lead the world in manufacturing semiconductors.”Ms. Raimondo, who is expected to participate in the tour over the coming weeks, told a crowd gathered at Wolfspeed that the pandemic had “opened all of our eyes” to the importance of maintaining the global supply chain and protecting competitive advantages in technology.“The truth of it is the United States was for a long time a manufacturing powerhouse,” she said. “Still is, but for a long time we took our eye off the ball, and we watched manufacturing leave our shores in search of cheap labor in Asia.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The president spoke directly to people he said might feel “left behind” by technological changes, but said his administration would focus on programs that could train workers to produce technological projects without a college degree. Mr. Biden said the “vast majority” of jobs created by Wolfspeed would not require college degrees and could pay around $80,000.Events like the one held on Tuesday will provide Mr. Biden and his surrogates with an opportunity to hone his argument against Republicans.At the same time, a collision course looms in Washington over the debt ceiling.On Tuesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, wrote a letter urging the president to negotiate on the federal debt limit. “With each passing day,” Mr. McCarthy wrote, “I am incredibly concerned that you are putting an already fragile economy in jeopardy by insisting upon your extreme position of refusing to negotiate any meaningful changes to out-of-control government spending.”Mr. Biden has said he will refuse to negotiate on the debt limit, pointing out that Republicans voted to raise the ceiling several times under his predecessor, Mr. Trump.“It’s time for Republicans to stop playing games, pass a clean debt ceiling bill and quit threatening our economic recovery,” Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement responding to Mr. McCarthy’s letter.In his own letter sent on Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden urged Mr. McCarthy and congressional Republicans to present a full budget proposal before Congress leaves for Easter recess.The president and his advisers have signaled that the situation would be worse under Republican leadership, a point he underscored in North Carolina. The White House says that companies have made $16 billion in private sector investment commitments since Mr. Biden took office, a development they have attributed to corporations taking advantage of tax breaks and federal funding that bolsters innovation.Mr. Biden has argued that the flow of money would be at stake if Republicans tried to repeal policies passed under his administration, including the Inflation Reduction Act. He has also said that individual Americans are at risk of losing access to lower health care, energy and internet costs that are provided for in the bills that were passed by a Democratic-majority Congress.“We’re not going to let them undo all the progress,” Mr. Biden said. More

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    Biden Weighs State of the Union Focus on His Unfinished Agenda

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    As the president prepares for his national address, his aides debate an emphasis on his still-unrealized plans for child care, prekindergarten and more.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s top economic aides have battled for weeks over a key decision for his State of the Union address on Tuesday: how much to talk about child care, prekindergarten, paid leave and other new spending proposals that the president failed to secure in the flurry of economic legislation he signed in his first two years in office.Some advisers have pushed for Mr. Biden to spend relatively little time on those efforts, even though he is set to again propose them in detail in the budget blueprint he will release in March. They want the president to continue championing the spending he did sign into law, like investments in infrastructure like roads and water pipes, and advanced manufacturing industries like semiconductors, while positioning him as a bipartisan bridge-builder on critical issues for the middle class.Other aides want Mr. Biden to spend significant time in the speech on an issue set that could form the core of his likely re-election pitch to key swing voters, particularly women. Polls by liberal groups suggest such a focus, on helping working families afford care for their children and aging parents, could prove a winning campaign message.The debate is one of many taking place inside the administration as Mr. Biden tries to determine which issues to focus on in a speech that carries extra importance this year. It will be Mr. Biden’s first address to the new Republican majority in the House, which has effectively slammed the brakes on his legislative agenda for the next two years. And it could be a preview for the themes Mr. Biden would stress on the 2024 campaign trail should he run for a second term.Administration officials caution that Mr. Biden has not finalized his strategy. A White House official said Friday that the president was preparing to tout his economic record and his full vision for the economy.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands as the third year of his term begins.State of the Union: President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union speech on Feb. 7, at a time when he faces an aggressive House controlled by Republicans and a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information.Chief of Staff: Mr. Biden named Jeffrey D. Zients, his former coronavirus response coordinator, as his next chief of staff. Mr. Zients replaces Ron Klain, who has run the White House since the president took office.Economic Aide Steps Down: Brian Deese, who played a pivotal role in negotiating economic legislation Mr. Biden signed in his first two years in office, is leaving his position as the president’s top economic adviser.Eyeing 2024: Mr. Biden has been assailing House Republicans over their tax and spending plans, including potential changes to Social Security and Medicare, as he ramps up for what is likely to be a run for re-election.Few of Mr. Biden’s advisers expect Congress to act in the next two years on paid leave, an enhanced tax credit for parents, expanded support for caregivers for disabled and older Americans or expanded access to affordable child care. All were centerpieces of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan Mr. Biden announced in the first months of his administration. Mr. Biden proposes to offset those and other proposals with tax increases on high earners and corporations.Earlier this week, Mr. Biden hinted that he may be preparing to pour more attention on those so-called “care economy” proposals, which he and his economic team say would help alleviate problems that crimp family budgets and block would-be workers from looking for jobs.At a White House event celebrating the 30th anniversary of a law that mandated certain workers be allowed to take unpaid medical leave, Mr. Biden ticked through his administration’s efforts to invest in a variety of care programs in the last two years, while acknowledging failure to pass federally mandated paid leave and other larger programs.Mr. Biden said he remained committed to “passing a national program of paid leave and medical leave.”“And, by the way, American workers deserve paid sick days as well,” he said. “Paid sick days. Look, I’ve called on Congress to act, and I’ll continue fighting.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.For Mr. Biden, continuing to call for new spending initiatives aimed at lower- and middle-income workers would draw a clear contrast with the still-nascent field of Republicans seeking the White House in 2024. It would cheer some outside advocacy groups that have pushed him to renew his focus on programs that would particularly aid women and children.The State of the Union speech “presents the president with a rare opportunity to take a victory lap and, simultaneously, advance his agenda,” the advocacy group First Focus on Children said in a news release this week. “All to the benefit of children.”The efforts could also address what Mr. Biden’s advisers have identified as a lingering source of weakness in the recovery from the pandemic recession: high costs of caregiving, which are blocking Americans from looking for work. The nonprofit group ReadyNation estimates in a new report that child care challenges cost American families $78 billion a year and employers another $23 billion.“Among prime-age people not working in the United States, roughly half of them list care responsibilities as the main reason for not participating in the labor force,” Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters this week. She noted that the jobs rebound has lagged in care industries like nursing homes and day care centers.“These remain economic challenges and addressing them could go a long ways towards supporting our nation’s labor supply,” she said.But focusing on that unfinished economic work could conflict with Mr. Biden’s repeated efforts this year to portray the economy as strong and position him as a president who reached across the aisle to secure big new investments that are lifting growth and job creation. On Friday, the president celebrated news that the economy created 517,000 jobs in January, in a brief speech that did not mention the challenges facing caregivers.Calling for vast new spending programs also risks further antagonizing House conservatives, who have made government spending their first large fight with the president. Republicans have threatened to allow the United States to fall into an economically catastrophic default on government debt by not raising the federal borrowing limit, unless Mr. Biden agrees to sharp cuts in existing spending.“Revenue into the government has never been higher,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, told reporters on Thursday, a day after he met with Mr. Biden at the White House to discuss fiscal issues and the debt limit. “It’s the highest revenue we’ve ever seen in. So it’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending problem.”Catie Edmondson More

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    Biden Hammers Republicans on the Economy, With Eye on 2024

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    The president has found a welcome foil in a new conservative House majority and its tax and spending plans, sharpening a potential re-election message.WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday assailed House Republicans over their tax and spending plans, including potential changes to popular retirement programs, ahead of what is likely to be a run for re-election.In a speech in Springfield, Va., Mr. Biden sought to reframe the economic narrative away from the rapid price increases that have dogged much of his first two years in office and toward his stewardship of an economy that has churned out steady growth and strong job gains.Mr. Biden, speaking to members of a steamfitters union, sought to take credit for the strength of the labor market, moderating inflation and news from the Commerce Department on Thursday morning that the economy had grown at an annualized pace of 2.9 percent at the end of last year. In contrast, he cast House Republicans and their economic policy proposals as roadblocks to continued improvement.“At the time I was sworn in, the pandemic was raging and the economy was reeling,” Mr. Biden said before ticking through the actions he had taken to aid the recovery. Those included $1.9 trillion in pandemic and economic aid; a bipartisan bill to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, water pipes and other infrastructure; and a sweeping industrial policy bill to spur domestic investment in advanced manufacturing sectors like semiconductors and speed research and development to seed new industries.Republicans have accused the Biden administration of fanning inflation by funneling too much federal money into the economy, and have called for deep spending cuts and other fiscal changes.Mr. Biden denounced those proposals, including a plan to replace federal income taxes with a national sales tax, curb safety net spending and risk a government default by refusing to raise the federal borrowing limit without deep spending cuts. Why, he asked, “would the Americans give up the progress we’ve made for the chaos they’re suggesting?”Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans have not yet released a detailed or unified economic agenda.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip,” Mr. Biden said, reiterating his refusal to negotiate over raising the debt limit. “The United States of America — we pay our debts.”But the president also sought to reach out to working-class voters — in places like his native Scranton, Pa. — who have increasingly voted for Republicans in recent elections. Mr. Biden said those voters had been left behind by American economic policy in recent years, and he tried to woo them back by promising that his policies would continue to bring high-paying manufacturing jobs that do not require a college degree to people who feel “invisible” in the economy.“They remember, in my old neighborhoods, why the jobs went away,” Mr. Biden said, vowing that under his policies “nobody’s left behind.”The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands as the third year of his term begins.State of the Union: President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union speech on Feb. 7, at a time when he faces an aggressive House controlled by Republicans and a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information.Chief of Staff: Mr. Biden plans to name Jeffrey D. Zients, his former coronavirus response coordinator, as his next chief of staff. Mr. Zients will replace Ron Klain, who has run the White House since the president took office two years ago.Voting Rights: A year after promising a voting rights overhaul in a fiery speech, Mr. Biden delivered a more muted message at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.The speech built on a pattern for Mr. Biden, who has found the new and narrow Republican majority to be both a political threat and an opportunity.Republicans in the chamber have begun a series of investigations into Mr. Biden, his family and his administration. They have also demanded deep cuts in federal spending in exchange for raising the borrowing limit, a position that risks an economic catastrophe given the huge sums of money that the United States borrows to pay for its financial obligations.The president has refused to tie any spending cuts to raising the debt limit and has called on Congress to increase the $31.4 trillion cap so the nation can continue paying its bills and avoid a federal default..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.But Mr. Biden, who is facing a divided Congress for the first time in his presidency, is increasingly acting as if the newly empowered conservatives have given him a political opening on economic policy. As he prepares for a likely re-election bid in 2024, he is seizing on the least popular proposals floated by House members to cast himself as a champion of the working class, retirees and economic progress.Mr. Biden’s speech on Thursday waded deep into policy details, including the acreage of western timber burned in fires linked to climate change, the global breakdown of advanced chip production and the average salary of new manufacturing jobs, as he recounted his legislative accomplishments.House Republicans have not yet released a detailed or unified economic agenda, and they have not made a clear set of demands for raising the debt limit, though they largely agree that Mr. Biden must accept significant spending curbs.But members and factions of the Republican conference have pushed for votes on a variety of proposals that have little support among voters, including raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare and replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax.Mr. Biden has sought to brand the entire Republican Party with those proposals, even though it is not clear if the measures have majority support in the conference or will ever come to a vote. Former President Donald J. Trump, who has already announced his 2024 bid for the White House, has urged Republicans not to touch the safety-net programs. Other party leaders have urged Republicans not to rule out those cuts. “We should not draw lines in the sand or dismiss any option out of hand, but instead seriously discuss the trade-offs of proposals,” Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News, in which he called for Mr. Biden to negotiate over raising the debt limit.Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, told a tax conference in Washington this week that there are “lots of problems” with the plan to replace the income tax with a so-called fair tax on consumption. Those include incentives for policymakers to allow prices to rise rapidly in the economy in order to generate more revenue from the sales tax, he noted.“Let’s just say it’s going to be very interesting,” Mr. Hern said at the D.C. Bar Taxation Community’s annual tax conference. “I haven’t found a Ways and Means member that’s for it.”Despite those internal disagreements, Mr. Biden has been happy to pick and choose unpopular Republican ideas and frame them as the true contrast to his economic agenda. He has pointedly refused to cut safety-net programs and threatened to veto such efforts.“The president is building an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, and protecting Social Security and Medicare,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters this week. “Republicans want to cut Social Security, want to cut Medicare — programs Americans have earned, have paid in — and impose a 30 percent national sales tax that will increase taxes on working families. That is what they have said they want to do, and that is clearly their plan.”The focus on Republicans has allowed Mr. Biden to divert the economic conversation from inflation, which hit 40-year highs last year but receded in the past several months, though it remains above historical norms. On Thursday, he chided Republicans for a vote to reduce funding for I.R.S. enforcement against wealthy tax cheats — a move the Congressional Budget Office says would add to the budget deficit, and which Mr. Biden cast as inflationary.“They campaigned on inflation,” Mr. Biden said. “They didn’t say if elected, they planned to make it worse.”Progressive groups see an opportunity for Mr. Biden to score political points and define the economic issue before the 2024 campaign begins in earnest. That is in part because polls suggest Americans have little appetite for Social Security or Medicare cuts, and have far less focus on the national debt than House Republicans do.“It is a political gift,” said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal nonprofit in Washington. More