Biden Is Rebranding Reagan’s Supply-Side Economics to Save His Agenda
The beloved GOP label is taking on a different meaning—one that excites liberals and irks conservatives—as the administration applies it to “Build Back Better.”
If you’re president, it’s useful if you can convince the American people that there’s a coherent and unified economic theory underpinning what may look like your grab bag of policies. You want something with a bit more intellectual heft than a slogan—something with maybe even a whiff of academia.
Yet for a year, as Joe Biden pursued the most ambitious liberal agenda in half a century, his administration didn’t seem to have one. “If you got an ordinary American and asked for the elevator pitch for the Biden plan, I think they’d be stumped,” says Alan Blinder, a Princeton economics professor who was appointed vice chair of the Federal Reserve by President Bill Clinton.