Harry Litman [00:00:07] Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. Three more mass shootings this week in Philadelphia, Virginia Beach and Boulder, Colorado, left the country shell shocked yet again, reviving discussion of the dozen compelling arguments for a series of reasonable gun restrictions that the NRA and thus the Republican Party will yet again reject. Where is the path out of this awfulness? Joe Biden held his first press conference as president. He called Republicans' wave of efforts to restrict voting rights 'un-American,' laid the groundwork for filibuster reform and suggested U.S. troops would be out of Afghanistan within a year. His administration seems near to unveiling an ambitious progressive set of economic plans.
The wide ranging proposals would rebuild infrastructure, tackle climate change, expand Obamacare and narrow economic inequality. The proposals would cost about three to four trillion dollars, over and above the one point nine trillion dollar American Recovery Act that the administration pushed through on a straight party line vote earlier this month. And all the while, the administration was rolling out an enormous vaccination campaign that is running well ahead of schedule, with more than 100 million shots having now been administered. It appears as if the president, whom opponents assailed during the campaign as old school and even doddering, is bucking for an initial hundred days on the order of FDR. Taken together, the administration's blueprint would work an essential transformation in American political and economic life, focused on the middle class but extending to the rich and poor alike. To discuss these remarkable prospects, we have a tailor-made panel combining the highest economic expertize and political acumen. They are:
Al Franken, Al served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. He currently hosts the Al Franken podcast, one of the smartest and funniest podcasts out there. And he also has a YouTube channel that you should subscribe to. It took him a while to find his calling in politics, having had previous stints as a writer, comedian and author. Senator Franken, thanks very much for returning to talking feds.
Al Franken [00:02:49] Always a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me back.
Harry Litman [00:02:54] Betsey Stevenson, an economist and professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, as well as a fellow of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich and a member of the Board of the American Economic Association. She served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015, where she advised President Obama on social policy, labor market and trade issues, and before that served as the chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010 to 2011. She, too, has her own podcast, it's called Think Like an Economist, and it's well worth checking out. This is her first appearance on Talking Feds, Betsey, thanks very much for joining us.
Betsey Stevenson [00:03:43] It's great to be here.
Harry Litman [00:03:45] And Paul Krugman, Paul's a Nobel Prize winning economist and op ed columnist for The New York Times and distinguished professor of economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is also professor emeritus of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and an author and editor of 27 books, his most recent being Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics and the Fight for a Better Future. Krugman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to new trade theory and new economic geography. The prize committee cited his work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity. Paul, it's an honor to welcome you. Thanks for being here.
Paul Krugman [00:04:37] Great to be on.
Harry Litman [00:04:39] All right. Let's start with an overview question. How ambitious and transformative is Biden's overall economic blueprint, not simply the recovery plan, but the three to four trillion dollars that he seems to be anticipating? I'm reminded, of course, of Obama in 2008 when the narrative was he was forced into a bailout that was something like one hundred fifty billion dollars, and therefore was hamstrung from achieving many of his other agenda items. It seems now that Biden passes a much larger package on a narrow party line and only to turn around immediately and go very long again. And there's a sense that in particular, worries about inflation are so 2008. Is that true? Is it a sea change, and what explains it?
Al Franken [00:05:36] Since it's a question about economics, I think I should answer it.
Harry Litman [00:05:39] Yeah, why don't you — can we start here?
Betsey Stevenson [00:05:40] Actually, I was going to say I think Al should take this, it's a question about politics.
Harry Litman [00:05:46] Well, in fact, it's sort of both. And I actually think economics is pretty interesting, you know, we're unlike, say, COVID, where you want to turn it over completely to the scientists and experts. It's always a mix, right? It's always economics filtered through politics.
Betsey Stevenson [00:06:01] I think, cause partially what you asked was trying to get something big like this done, is that a sea change in politics? There's the other question, which is what exactly is this bill doing? I mean, one point nine trillion dollars is a whole lot of money right out of the gate, even if that was the only thing he got. What does that do? And then he's got a very, very ambitious economic agenda going forward. I think it's probably worth breaking it down into the two parts. And, you know, one point nine trillion was just a really ambitious idea of ending child poverty. Now, the problem is, is it's like we're America. We're going to end child poverty for one year, and then see how it goes.
Paul Krugman [00:06:41] Yeah. The thing is that leaving aside the huge numbers, there's this funny thing that we've got this huge bill, but it's temporary, but a lot of it is not intended to be temporary. The idea is basically to create facts, who's who wants to be the politician who says, OK, all you families who've been getting three thousand dollars a year to help take care of your kids, we're going to take that money away now. And the idea is that it will, in fact, become permanent. And if so, that is as Biden didn't exactly say when Obamacare was signed, this is a big something deal. And there's also substantial enhancements of subsidies for health care, which is and also is supposed to be permanent. So even if it was just this bill, you'd have this pretty significant expansion of the US safety net, and then, of course, if the second phase two happens, then we've moved a substantial way towards having something closer to a genuine sort of Western European style social democracy here.
Harry Litman [00:07:36] Yeah, well, let me try to put this in political terms Al, because my understanding is part of what's going on, the Dems seem to have the appetite to take this on and there is a view that they were too timid. They didn't listen to Paul Krugman and others in 2008 and as a result actually got beat up some in elections in the 2010s. Is it right to say, they now feel emboldened to go bigger and are less worried about the charges of spending too much?
Al Franken [00:08:10] I think there's been a little bit of a sea change on the views on deficits and debt. I did an event with Paul a couple of nights ago and we were talking about that. And basically during Obama, there was a lot of what Paul likes to call 'very serious people,' who are very serious about deficits. And I was there during that period, and yeah, they were just Simpson-Bowles was very big. They kind of gave up the ghost on that a little bit. Dick Cheney, of course, famously said the deficits don't matter. Or rather, he said 'deficits don't matter.' And they pass this huge tax cut that added one point nine trillion dollars to the deficit. And so their heart doesn't seem to quite be in it. They screamed a little about it, but they're not doing that anymore.
And it will be interesting now, this three trillion dollar package it's talking about and Republicans like infrastructure, Americans like infrastructure. We need infrastructure. We need infrastructure for a whole bunch of reasons. Americans want our roads and bridges and tunnels and airports and rail to kind of even like resemble the rest of the developed world. That's one part of that. It's also jobs, and also this is part of the Biden approach and Democratic approach to climate change, which is that we need to build infrastructure that is addressing this climate crisis. So this is going to be very interesting politically and then that will get us to the filibuster, which we can discuss later.
Harry Litman [00:09:48] Well, we can get there.
Betsey Stevenson [00:09:49] That question of are people, are they motivated by the mistakes of 2008? I'm not, I'm going to let Al answer for the elected officials, let me answer for the technocrats. And the answer is yes. You know, I certainly see economic advisors who want to go bigger because they understand that we didn't go big enough. You clearly see that out of the Federal Reserve Board. I mean, every single member of the board seems to be pretty motivated by the idea that they tightened too early, that they could have done more to have sped up the recovery out of 2008. I think that they are being really clear that we're going to have very accommodative monetary policy for a while. The issue on deficits, I think the way it gets talked about, it often sounds like we'll just fickle.
We used to care about them. We used to care about the debt and we don't anymore. But there's actually something really importantly different going on in the world that means that we should care less about it today than we did in, say, the 1990s, which is it's clear government borrowing is not crowding out business borrowing right now. Interest rates are incredibly low, and when the government borrows to do an infrastructure project, it's not like there's some business that was there about to build a new factory. And it's like it's too expensive to take out that loan, I'm not going to build a new factory. So we really shouldn't care in the same way about the debt today that we cared 20 years ago.
Paul Krugman [00:11:18] The parties are different. It's hard to imagine that any piece of academic or scientific research would change Republicans' views on anything, but Democrats actually take their technocrats seriously. So one of the things that is kind of not on cable news, you're not going to see in a lot of political reporting, But the fact of the matter is that the economists that other economists take seriously have gotten out there and said, hey, this doesn't look like the same world. This appears to be one now of persistently, very low interest rates, which looks like a world that's awash in savings with no place to go. We need infrastructure. Let's put those savings to work by borrowing. And so, in some ways, the most important political event in many ways for the Biden administration was the speech that Olivier Blanchard, former chair, chief economist at the IMF gave at the American Economic Association a couple of years ago, saying that we've been worrying too much about debt, here's the numbers. And this filters through, at some point is this is not the best, you know, from the inside. But this filters through. I think a lot of economists would now say that even even given the numbers that we had in 2008, 2009, we went way too small. But also now people have changed. It looks like a world that's friendly to thinking big about government spending.
Harry Litman [00:12:34] And I should say you were at the time calling for four times the spending, up to six hundred billion. So I'm hearing both of you say this isn't simply Larry Summers is out now and Paul Krugman is in, but it really reflects a true evolution in economic thinking based on facts on the ground and the apparent continuity of very low interest rates over a fair period of time. In fact, let me put it that way, is that is all the new thinking dependent on interest rates remaining relatively low? Would it change things back again if for some reason that were to change?
Betsey Stevenson [00:13:12] There's clearly been a change in how economists think. And you give the example of it's not simply Larry Summers is out. Look, even Larry Summers things very differently about it. Don't mistake his saying this one point nine trillion bill was too big or potentially too big as saying he's still not on the side. Larry is also on the side of more government spending, more government borrowing and government doing more investment in public infrastructure. So I think there's clearly a change. I think there would be a bunch of people who change their mind if we had really high interest rates. Look, it'd cost a lot more to service our debt, so servicing the debt would end up being a bigger chunk of our government spending. That would make people, I think, a little bit more reticent. If interest rates are high, then we're going to be worrying about what do we need to do to entice more businesses to invest. And I think we would be a little bit worried about business investment declining even further. So I do think it's a different world when you have high interest rates, but we've had interest rates really sluggishly low for a long time. And that's not just Fed policy.
Paul Krugman [00:14:21] Just one more thing is that it's not just that the facts have changed. You could tell, go back 10 years. The interest rates were already pretty low. And in fact, they'd never really been that high for a really long time. But there was a mindset that you could watch some of our colleagues and economists trying to find reasons why debt was a problem. And there were, there was clearly a sentiment that we were going to we're going to look, it must be a problem. And even if the numbers on the face of it don't seem to support that, it must be. And we'll we'll come up with some justification. And that's all pretty much gone now, and now it's just a completely different mindset that is based in part on the world changing, in part on ok, we thought about it. Sometimes you change your mind.
Harry Litman [00:15:03] But so you write yourself, and I think it's just rhetorical. I mean, you're setting up the counterargument. But in a recent article, Paul, you say, look, it's possible that the American rescue plan will turn out in retrospect to have been too much of a good thing. What would that look like?
Paul Krugman [00:15:20] OK, so there's a fine point here that Betsy and I, I think, are more immediately attuned to, which is there's a question about are we worried about the debt that's going to be incurred? Very, very few serious economists who seem to be seriously worried about the debt, about the one point nine trillion dollars added to the to the liability side of the balance sheet. What you're worried about is that this is putting a lot of money in people's hands right now and that the economy might overheat, that we might have too much spending chasing too few goods, and you might get some inflation. And that's not an unreasonable concern, the US economy is huge, but one point nine trillion here, one point nine trillion there, and soon you're talking about real money. So this is a big enough thing that it's not foolish to ask, can we swallow this much spending? This is a thing on which reasonable people can disagree. Now, I'm a little surprised that Larry has gotten as apocalyptic about it as he has, but being concerned about is not unreasonable.
Betsey Stevenson [00:16:12] I agree 100 percent with where the risk comes from. It's not from the debt, it's from the potential for people to go out and just want to buy more than there is. And if you're trying to buy more than there is, how do sellers react? Well, they raise the prices because how else are they going to allocate it? There are some things where we've already seen sort of a surge in demand as people are trying to get back to life like used cars. Everybody's like, oh, I got to get back to work and I don't think I want to ride the bus anymore. That's scary. So I buy a used car, but, you know, that's sort of a temporary blip, we're already seeing that start to come back down. So we might get a temporary push up of prices that might come from demand getting a little bit ahead of supply.
But I believe in the American sellers and I think that they're going to be right there trying to increase it. I guess we would worry if you took the one point nine trillion and everybody spent one hundred percent of it right away. We've also got about one point nine trillion in excess savings because Americans saved a lot during the pandemic. So if they went out and spent all of that right away, you could end up with problems. I think these are very low probability events, though, and I'd put even more weight on the fact that we've also got, on the flip side, the potential for a coronavirus variant to keep us suppressed a little bit longer, people more reticent to do activity and that could keep the economy down. I think you needed a big enough package to make sure that we were insuring ourselves against that risk being too big.
Harry Litman [00:17:44] Yeah, excellent point. And my sense is that the effect on the economy of the virus was the economy stayed pretty robust, including at the government level. Well relative to predictions Al, do you think that's right?
Al Franken [00:17:57] It wasn't very robust for the people who were really hurting and that was an important part of this. And food insecurity tripled. This was really rough on people, really rough. And this package is needed for those people. There will be people getting the $1400 checks who may not need it. But I think it's better to make sure that the people who do need it get what they need. And I think the economy will expand and I think people will start producing things to meet demand. And I think that's all good. That's what we want. You know, McConnell, when they passed the COVID Relief Act, he just went, 'well, Biden is just tryna get in front of the parade. Economy's already expandin'. And, you know, screw him.
Harry Litman [00:18:47] One of the many reasons your absence is so keenly felt in the Senate is you're mimicking ability. Hardly anybody can do a really good imitation anymore.
Al Franken [00:18:56] Well, the thing about doing McConnell is that he has marbles in his mouth.
Harry Litman [00:19:03] All right. Let's zero in on this economic inequality which, as Paul says, really is historic and does bring us into the model of Western European democracies or Canada. And it's noteworthy that Biden, Mr. Kitchen Table Issues from Scranton is really going, you know, a frontal attack on the most vulnerable Americans, probably as much as we've had since the days of the Great Society. So let me serve it up this way: is the increasing disparity between the richest and poorest Americans a matter of political equity and just, you know, it's just wrong? Or is it also a matter of economic health?
Al Franken [00:19:49] It's a drag on the poor That's significant. That is significant, and ultimately, I think that speaks to the health of our economy. Paul Wellstone said we all do better when we all do better.
Betsey Stevenson [00:20:02] What you're getting at is, is this just about what's fair and people's well-being or is this actually really important for the overall health of the economy? Can an economy continue to thrive if you've got a bottom 20 percent that are drowning?
Paul Krugman [00:20:20] Maybe put it excessive specificity, but does helping the poor paid for with taxes on the rich, does that raise or lower GDP? And one answer to that question is, who cares? Because you have to lower GDP an awful lot for this not to actually improve the lives of the poor anyway. And the question, does it actually raise GDP, which it certainly could do over the long run, particularly because of a better childhood, leads to better adults, more productive adults. I think the important thing to say about it is that whatever the effects are, the effects of doing the kinds of things that it appears Biden is doing, even if just conceivably it might lead to slightly smaller GDP in the long run, it's not going to possibly be enough to offset the huge gains for the people who are receiving help. If we could have GDP that was a trillion dollars bigger, but a trillion and a half of the trillion dollars went to the top one percent then we are not better off as a nation.
Betsey Stevenson [00:21:14] I want to pick up on something that Paul said because I think it's really important, which is the benefits to children and what that means for the long run. And one of the things I am constantly frustrated about with our federal government is the failure to adequately represent children and ensure that we don't have children in poverty. We have way too many kids in poverty. Kids don't get access to investment in the most formative and important years of their life before the age of five. We're sort of stuck in this rut from a century ago where we thought we should start schooling at age five because that's when people could learn to read and write. But it turns out that our brain synapses are forming the fastest below the age of five. And we know that early childhood education leads to better outcomes as adults, we know that a dollar in early childhood education is a net present value to taxpayers of well over a dollar. Some estimates suggest seven to eight dollars from the research. So this spending on kids is what will set us up to have a stronger economy.
As Paul said, in 20 or 30 years, politicians don't always like to think in the long run like that, and they also tend to respond to the squeakiest wheel, which is why we've been able to really lower elder poverty through federal policies, and yet we've left a large number of our kids in poverty. The Biden plan just lifted a lot of those kids out of poverty. I think what we're going to get is a new cohort that's supported and we're going to see what it actually does for them. But I think it's great for kids. I also think you can't underestimate the cognitive load of poverty. And poverty, it's hard work. I'm exhausted at the end of the day trying to do my job. I don't have enough bandwidth to manage the cognitive load of poverty, plus do my job.
Harry Litman [00:23:07] Yeah, it's a great point. Every 10 minutes is another challenge.
Al Franken [00:23:11] And this is a legacy of racism. And I on my podcast just had Heather McGhee.
Harry Litman [00:23:18] That was a great episode, by the way. Everyone check that out.
Al Franken [00:23:20] Thank you. And her book, The Sum of US, is about basically how Republicans sort of sell the idea that it's a zero sum game and that any gains for black people is a loss for white people. And that's not true. Early childhood, of course, kids who have early childhood education are less likely to be left back a grade, they're more likely to graduate from high school. The girls are less likely to get pregnant in adolescence. They are more likely to go to college. They're more likely to graduate from college. They are more likely to not go to prison. We pay an enormous price for the way we do things. We all do better when we all do better. When the middle class is strong, that's when we all do better. We have to educate our people. This has been devastating, if you look at like the kids in D.C. during COVID, it's been horrible.
Harry Litman [00:24:22] Yeah, I mean, all all granted. And it seems as if the lesson is maybe learned.
All right, it's now time to take a moment for our Sidebar feature, which explains some of the issues and relationships that are prominent in the news. And today we are going to be talking about how the federal government can address state and local police brutality. The topic is particularly germane because this week the nation will turn its attention back to Minneapolis and the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin on charges of killing George Floyd in a video that horrified the country. And to do it, we are really honored to welcome Lucinda Williams, the American rock folk and country music legendary singer, songwriter and musician. She's been nominated in her storied career for 15 Grammy Awards, won three, and she was named America's best songwriter by Time magazine in 2002. I give you Lucinda Williams on the federal government's tools to address state and local police brutality.
Lucinda Williams [00:25:39] How can federal law and the federal government address police brutality? Most regulation of police departments is a state and local government function, but the federal government has some very powerful tools to punish individual acts of brutality or clean up rogue police departments. Part of the Fourth Amendment's right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures is a prohibition on the use of unreasonable force by government officials. Blatant acts of police brutality, as in the Rodney King or George Floyd cases, usually entail willful deprivation of that right. That constitutes a federal crime prosecuted by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. In most cases, DOJ lets state prosecutors pursue charges under state law first, buy federal civil rights charges can serve as a backdrop, as in the Rodney King case, if justice is not done in the state case.
The special litigation section of the Civil Rights Division can also bring up litigation against entire police departments for policies that violate the Constitution. The court can order remedies; possible remedies may include training, oversight boards or outlaw of particular illegal practices. And DOJ has an array of policies designed to encourage best services. For example, to further police involvement with the community and provide federal funds to expand training. For Talking Feds, I'm Lucinda Williams.
Harry Litman [00:27:17] Thank you so much, Lucinda Williams. You can find Lucinda Williams' latest album, 'Good Souls, Better Angels,' and all kinds of her work at lucindawilliams.com . I just want to add, I've been a huge fan of hers since her first album. I think it's in the late 1980s and I was thrilled that she would do a sidebar. Her father was a well known poet, and I think she got her literary chops from him and they really shine through on many of her gorgeous songs.
So I want to drill down a little bit into infrastructure, because another part of this sea change, I think this is really the first time that serious money and just serious policy bandwidth is being spent on climate change. And so it's the Biden administration's innovation or idea to link them together. How does infrastructure, how is it intertwined with climate change? Is this more than a rhetorical idea?
Paul Krugman [00:28:27] This is an interesting thing. And this is one where I think we still need to do a little persuading of many economists on the issue, because the sort of standard economics principles of economics textbook answer is, well, the way you deal with climate change is by putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which is definitely a good thing to do. But that that's kind of the end of the story.
Harry Litman [00:28:48] You mean like making companies pay a certain amount of money?
Paul Krugman [00:28:51] Yeah. You know, you create a carbon tax or they have to buy carbon licenses, which is almost the same thing. And so they have an incentive to cut down. And that's fine, but what we learned, I think, is that— well there are two things we learned about the economics, which is that government investment makes a big difference. We've had this revolution in renewable energy technology and solar is now cheaper than coal. This whole thing, it just transformed. And that almost certainly has a fair bit to do with investments that were made during the Obama years. So the government, the technologies are not given, they can be really influenced by government policy and government policy, you can build infrastructure that makes it easier to do things that are good for the climate.
And the other thing that we've learned is that policies that are just all about eating your spinach are hard to enact. And if you wrap it together, if you say, OK, we're going to provide incentives for clean energy and we're going to build green infrastructure and we're going to create jobs, and it's a well, whatever the current you know, it was Green New Deal, now it's Build Back Better, but in any case, it's going to be this is going to be a big positive thing with lots of rewards for people. That's how you get stuff done. You don't get stuff done by being a purist and saying, here's what the textbook says is the answer. You get it by, first of all, saying that the textbook oversimplifies and also by saying that, hey, you need to build a coalition. And that's something that also has changed a lot in the past decade or so.
Betsey Stevenson [00:30:17] I really believe in pricing carbon, so strongly, like you can't expect us to exist in the world, particularly when we're going to have Canada pricing carbon with Europe pricing carbon. We want to exist globally, and we're like, nah, yeah carbon is costing the world something every time you use it, but we're not going to have that price internalized into markets. It drives me crazy. I want people to understand, when you use carbon, there is a cost. And if we don't have that cost incorporated into the price of whatever it is that you're using, we don't have the real price of carbon in the pricing system. Then we're going to overuse carbon. We're going to think it's cheaper than it really is. And that simple econ. I agree with Paul, though. It's absolutely not. You can't end there. And I think the frustrating thing that we never talk about in the textbooks is we in the United States have found it impossible to get a political coalition together to support carbon pricing.
Al Franken [00:31:15] The head of the American Petroleum Institute just came out in the last few days for a carbon tax. So that's huge.
Paul Krugman [00:31:24] Yeah, there's something extremely weird going on, which is that the sophisticated fossil fuel companies are now coming out for a carbon tax, which they are viewing as a way to head off even more stringent measures that they want a carbon tax. But they're going to try then they're hoping that they can make it stay low and also that they can avoid large scale initiatives that will put them out of business entirely. We have moved a long way. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that climate change may be moving faster than the political realities. But still, by the way, the reason that Betsy and I keep saying carbon pricing is that there are other ways to do it.
You can also say, OK, there's a market in permits and there's a limited number of permits and that's how we control sulfur dioxide. That's how we avoided having an acid rain catastrophe. So that's the alternative. But actually, it looks to me like it actually is going to be a carbon tax, but that's not the be all and end all and package it, make it part of rebuilding a green infrastructure. We're creating jobs. We're all going to be electrified. A mega scale Tennessee Valley Authority saves the planet because that's how to make it something that doesn't sound to people from West Virginia, like you're telling them that they have no reason to exist.
Al Franken [00:32:32] Well, also, it can be revenue neutral. People get the money back and we can pay for the three trillion dollars in infrastructure in different ways, one of which is raising taxes on the very wealthy, which I actually boy, do I believe we should do that. I just thought it was odd that Trump ran on a trillion dollar infrastructure package in '16, and he's the guy who bills himself as a builder, and there are about three years there that every week was infrastructure week and we never did anything. We never did it at all. And people want it. We need to do this. It dovetails with addressing climate.
Betsey Stevenson [00:33:15] Al, do you think there's a credibility problem in Congress saying we're going to do something about infrastructure? Given that I feel like I just want to start giggling anytime somebody says infrastructure week now because it doesn't mean anything's going to happen.
Paul Krugman [00:33:28] Oh, yeah. But there was an issue, right? I mean, the Republicans in general and Trump in particular don't really know how to write legislation anymore that does anything. They don't know how to do anything except cut taxes.
Al Franken [00:33:40] And right wing judges.
Paul Krugman [00:33:42] Yeah, and they and then when they had a draft Trump infrastructure "plan," scare quotes around plan, the straightforward thing is, OK, let's just have the government spend the trillion dollars. Instead it was all of this public-private partnership that straightforward idea of just actually doing something good is something that they don't know how to do. But we have a very different crowd running things now. They're running things by a margin of one Kamala Harris, but they're, I think that it's not going to be that hard to get over the disbelief factor that came out of the Trump years, because this is just a very different group of people.
Harry Litman [00:34:14] It's also noteworthy what is spinach and what isn't now, that actually climate change and other things maybe have arrived at a point where they are the sexy compliment to roads and bridges.
Betsey Stevenson [00:34:27] You know, if we're going to talk infrastructure and climate, we have to talk about jobs, because if you think about the infrastructure bill, it's got to be doing a couple of things. It's got to be redirecting where the US is going so that we're better positioned on the climate, but then it's also got to make sure that it's changing and giving people a path towards better jobs out of industries that we think are going to have to shrink in order to address climate. But not just those industries, right? Technological change means that there's a bunch of other people are going to end up losing their jobs. I think the big mistake that we made back when we were negotiating NAFTA was we provided all this help for workers who lost their jobs due to trade. And then you got workers who are losing their jobs due to technological change. It's like, no, no help for you. And what we need is support for workers in transitioning industries, whether they're transitioning because of trade, because of technology or because of climate. And that bill is going to do some of that.
Harry Litman [00:35:33] Senator Franken?
Al Franken [00:35:35] There are people who get hurt when you go away from carbon, but everybody gets hurt when you don't. And the challenge will be not to have those people stranded. I think there must be economic terms for that.
Paul Krugman [00:35:51] I think the economic term is stranded.
Al Franken [00:35:54] Oh, OK. And that's a challenge. But there's there just is no choice. The costs of climate change is so enormous. It's a national security threat. During the Obama years, the Defense Department said climate change is our greatest national security threat. And it is, if you get climate refugees all over the planet. You saw what refugees from Syria did in terms of destabilizing things and creating autocracies. And we can't not do this. The challenge is going to be winning the support of people in Wyoming and other places.
Harry Litman [00:36:38] Last word to you, Paul?
Paul Krugman [00:36:40] In many ways, I think that this is going to be — first of all, Betsy is right. You need to create an economy in which there is a... the social safety net isn't just for the persistently or predictably poor. It's for everybody who gets displaced because of change. And the change may become because of trade. It may become because of technology, or it might be because of policy to save the planet. And so you have to have a safety net. You need to do something which is offering people the prospect of jobs that you're creating. And also, a really big part of this is just that we have to get people — and this is the hardest part — away from the cultural attachment that is assigned to certain kinds of traditional things. I mean, the fact of the matter is there are very few coal miners left in America. Coal is more of a state of mind than it is an actual source of employment at this point.
Not not totally true, and, of course, I'll get in huge trouble from somebody for saying that. But I mean, there was this wonderful scenario with some Republican congressman from Kentucky challenged AOC to come talk about the green new deal to the coal miners in his district. And she said yes, but then it turned out there actually aren't any coal miners in his district, because there really is — there are hardly any coal miners around! And but we need to get all of these things, but the basic thing is clearly the center of gravity politically has shifted. Things that looked completely beyond the reach of happening, by no means guaranteed, but it does appear that it's possible we're going to do some really big stuff in the next few months.
Harry Litman [00:38:11] So I got to say, this is my take away. I mean, in the presence of world class economic and political acumen. And what I'm really taking away is we are truly living in history. It'll be days studied like the New Deal and the Great Society, possibly. All right. We have one minute or so left for our final Five Words or Fewer feature, and it comes from Michael Lockwood. He asks: if the Senate split stays as it is, will the child tax credit be extended? Five words or fewer, anybody.
Al Franken [00:38:47] Yes.
Paul Krugman [00:38:49] Yes.
Betsey Stevenson [00:38:49] Yes.
Harry Litman [00:38:51] Yes, even if it doesn't.
Betsey Stevenson [00:38:52] I'll add three more words to it, which is status quo bias.
Harry Litman [00:38:56] Great words, but the status quo is changing!
Thank you very much to Al, Betsey and Paul, and thank you very much, listeners, for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts, and please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter, @TalkingFedsPod , to find out about future episodes and other Feds-related content. You can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have full episode transcripts, and you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters. We've just posted a one-on-one discussion with Norm Ornstein about the proposal he and Al Franken have advanced for reforming the filibuster. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com , whether it's for Five Words or Fewer, or general questions about the inner-workings of the legal system for our Sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry: as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking.
Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Dawn Griffin are our contributing writers. Research assistance by Abbie Meyer. Our production assistant is Matt McArdle, and our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Thanks very much to the great Lucinda Williams for explaining the federal government's toolkit for remedying state and local police brutality. Our gratitude, as always, to the amazing Philip Glass who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito, LLC. I'm Harry Litman, see you next time.
