The White House has spent the summer touting President Biden’s economic record in a case for re-election, calling it “Bidenomics.” In June, the administration released a paper summarizing its view of the current economy, the role of its policies to date in creating record job numbers and promoting manufacturing, noting high growth relative to peer countries and falling inflation rates, and the ways to build on success. Yet many working Americans still feel the impact of rising costs on their day-to-day lives and recent polling has shown that voters remain unhappy about the economy.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report, “Bidenomics” as Politics and Policy: Creditable Start, But Gaps to Fill, analyzing the administration’s record to date and its plans for the coming years, with ideas on messaging and policy solutions to fill the gaps missing in their economic agenda. Report author Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI, examines the case for Bidenomics, the administration’s success in reviving the COVID-stricken economy of 2020 and its less-compelling depiction of the likely Republican 2024 opposition, and the areas in which Bidenomics can go further.
Gresser’s critique pushes past oversimplification and generalities regarding the current economy, noting that the administration is right to claim credit for the strong current economy and focus on the working class, but is missing some important points by focusing almost exclusively on manufacturing and construction workers. The administration’s intended audience misses the much larger non-industrial working class, including the 15.5 million retail workers, the 11.5 million working in restaurants or bars, and their peers in repair work, personal care, health, and other services.
“While the Bidenomics message is a good start and the 2023 economy is strong, there are major policy and messaging gaps to fill,” said Ed Gresser. “Perhaps most important, Bidenomics should appeal to a wider audience — seeing the working class as something larger than the manufacturing labor force. Non-industrial workers — waitresses, bus drivers, retail cashiers, hair stylists, security guards — are as essential to a strong and fair economy as are factory and construction workers, and need to be part of the core policy agenda.”
Gresser further argues that it is a political error to base the Democratic 2024 messaging on a rejection of the last 40 years of history, and argues that the years before the 1980s were better for the American public. Instead, the administration should look to the future. Gresser also suggests that the term “trickle-down” is not a useful label for Republican opposition, as it blurs rather than elucidates the dramatic change in Republican economic policy that transpired under the Trump Administration, and the post-Trump shift toward “big government rightism.”
“Bidenomics’ presentation of the past generation of policy is intellectually unpersuasive, relies too much on terms like ‘trickle-down,’ and by suggesting a pre-1980s alternative as better running risks a nostalgic appeal to the 1970s. Its description of the likely Republican opposition in 2024 is likewise off, mistaking big-government Trumpism for small-government Reaganism and therefore not providing an especially compelling critique,” Gresser continues.
Read and download the report here.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C., with offices in Brussels, Berlin and the United Kingdom. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
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Media Contact: Amelia Fox, afox@ppionline.org