Day 29: middle class mission
Updated on 23 December 2008
Monday 22 December 2008: vice-president Joe Biden hones in on the middle classes.
A fortnight ago vice president-elect, Joe Biden, showed his commitment to the middle class and restoring the health of the economy by appointing Jared Bernstein to a newly-created post, chief economist and economic policy advisor to the vice president.
Yesterday, the Obama transition team said the vice president-elect would also chair the president-elect's White House Task Force on Working Families.
The task force will be made up of cabinet members like Hilda Solis, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson and Arne Duncan, as well as top advisors Melody Barnes, Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, and Christina Romer.
Through meetings and outreach with representatives of labour, business, and advocacy, it will work towards raising the living standards of the middle classes and the following goals:
- Expanding education and lifelong training opportunities
- Improving work and family balance
- Restoring labour standards, including workplace safety
- Helping to protect middle class and working-family incomes
- Protecting retirement security
Biden: It is a specific responsibility in terms of - it is a discrete job that is going to last only for a certain period of time.
Stephanopoulos: What will it do?
Biden: What it's going to do, it's going to include other cabinet members, including labour, HHS, OMB, education, etc, and my focus is going to be, I'm going to chair this group and it is designed to do the one thing we use as a yardstick of economic success of our administration, is the middle class growing?
Is the middle class getting better? Is the middle class no longer being left behind? And we'll look at everything from college affordability to after school programmes. The things that affect people's daily lives. I will be the guy honchoing that policy.
Stephanopoulos: Will you then have line authority? If you determine that a policy...
Biden: No.
Stephanopoulos: ... doesn't serving the middle class mean you'll have the authority to change it?
Biden: No, what I have the authority to do is to try to get a consensus among those people I just mentioned. If in fact there is no consensus, go to the president of the United States and say, Mr. President, I think we should be doing this, cabinet member so and so thinks that, you're going to have to resolve what it is we think we should do. But we're going to present him with a package as to what are the main elements of restoring the middle class.
In a separate interview with Larry King airing on CNN tonight, the vice president-elect was asked about the prospects for America's economic outlook turning around:
King: In your book, you say a question you got from people a lot during the campaign was, "Are we going to be OK?" So I'll ask it of you.
Biden: Yes, we are. We're going to be OK, not because of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. We're going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.
