The Revolving Door is Still Spinning, but Maybe Less Smoothly?
Newsletter 61: Obvious and not-so-obvious reasons for optimism in Biden’s early picks
Everyone agrees, the Biden administration will need to hit the ground running in order to mitigate the worst fallout from the overlapping public health and economic crises. Last week, one roadblock to the incoming administration’s preparations was finally removed when General Services Administrator Emily Murphy “ascertained” Biden’s victory. The ensuing days have seen a flood of high-profile personnel announcements. The pace, which is well ahead of Obama’s in 2008, suggests that the transition team recognizes the urgency of this moment. The team’s personnel choices, however, tell a more mixed story.
2020 (and potentially 2021)
The first batches of appointees share some things in common -- virtually all were high level figures in the Obama administration. When it comes to their post-2016 trajectories, however, there’s some real divergence. Some, like Janet Yellen and Jared Bernstein, headed for think tanks, examining many of the same conundrums they took on while in public office. Others, like Anthony Blinken, Avril Haines, and Brian Deese, took a different tack, selling their reputations, connections, and potential for future power to the highest corporate bidders.
The inclusion of the latter set has already created a stir on both sides of the aisle. And while we doubt that Republican lawmakers’ belated interest in corruption is sincere, it is well-documented that voters across the political spectrum dislike the corporate revolving door. That is something we would hope the transition team will consider as it makes its next selections.
But what about the revolvers who have already been selected? Is all hope for a bold National Economic Council (NEC), for example, lost? No, far from it.
First of all, it’s impossible to fully judge without knowing more names. Other as-of-yet unknown NEC members could help sway the body to give more transformative policy advice. Or those appointees (or other subcabinet nominees at, say, Treasury) could work to rein in policy ambition. The point is, it’s still early days, and there are many names to come that will matter enormously.
There is also at least some reason for optimism that the conflicted personnel who have been nominated thus far will be more likely to respond to progressive pressure to go bigger and bolder than they once would have been. For one thing, that pressure is much more formidable than it once was. Public interest advocates are more organized, more powerful, and better informed about the possibilities for executive power than at any time in a generation. That energy is not simply going to go away when nominees are installed but will be repurposed to push appointees to think more expansively and act more quickly.
There’s good reason to suspect that appointees will be more wary about sparking that progressive backlash. Although it’s impossible to know whether progressive critiques ever really threatened to derail these particular nominees, it’s clear that they have undermined others. And even if these picks never saw their eventual elevation in jeopardy, it’s definitely the case that they’ve been made to work harder -- including by calling on friends to vouch for their public interest bona fides -- than they imagined they would need to. We’re hoping that means they go the extra mile to demonstrate their independence from their past employers and their commitment to the public interest. We would be delighted to have our initial skepticism about these appointees turn out to be unfounded.
Governance
The Office of Management and Budget has enjoyed an unusual turn in the spotlight this week after Joe Biden announced that he would nominate Center for American Progress President and prolific tweeter Neera Tanden to lead it. Amid all of the chatter over the nomination, however, there was little talk of what she might actually do as the head of OMB. Although the Office is relatively low-profile, it is tremendously powerful. Among many other responsibilities, the next Director will be a key player in the effort to reinvigorate the civil service, rebalance government contracting, and raise the bar for the contractors that remain. As Heidi Shierholz lays out in one of the Day One Agenda’s most recent installments, President Biden can immediately raise wages and improve working conditions for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of contractors. With so many items on Biden’s plate, that is only likely to happen quickly if the Director of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy and OMB (in which it sits) pushes for it.
Also lost in the initial frenzy was the fact that, if confirmed, Tanden could inherit an office that could be missing the vast majority of its staff. Current Director Russell Vought has reportedly designated 88% of the Office’s staff for transfer to President Trump’s new “schedule F” job classification. Civil servants who are reclassified will no longer enjoy stringent job protections and would be at risk of being fired before inauguration.
Congressional Oversight
At the moment, Schedule F is not inevitable. The government is set to run out of funding by December 11, giving House Democrats a brief opening to halt Trump’s last minute attacks by expressly prohibiting appropriations for reclassification. If they were really feeling bold (or, let’s be honest, like doing their jobs) they could also try to use their bit of leverage to set the Biden administration up for its best chance of success. That would involve two components: stopping Trump from smashing everything within reach on his way out the door and infusing beleaguered agencies with the resources they need to take on this and oncoming crises.
Instead, for some unknown reason, Democratic leadership is gunning for a quiet compromise that will trade away their power to conduct damage control or reinforce struggling institutions through next September (or, almost a full year of House members’ two year terms). As James Kwak wrote this week, even if Democrats feel they must go along to keep the government funded this time around, that doesn’t require that they hand funding decisions critical to a Biden administration’s first eight months over to the lame duck. Instead of negotiating a continuing resolution through September they could keep the government funded through, say, January and try to secure major priorities then. Although we don’t yet know how Georgia’s special elections will play out, it would seem prudent to at least prepare for the possibility of success and a more favorable budget fight thereafter.
Unfortunately, neither Trump’s escalating attacks on democratic institutions nor House Democrats’ humiliation at the polls have convinced Democratic leadership that passivity is neither effective nor politically savvy. It is the country that will suffer for their refusal to face facts.
Anti-Monopoly
We’re still awaiting names for antitrust roles, but as the American Prospect’s David Dayen reported on Monday, there seems to be some reason for mild optimism. As expected, Big Tech has been weighing in on the identity of the next Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. Less expected, their preferred pick -- Paul Weiss Rifkind Partner and Big Tech counsel extraordinaire Karen Dunn -- was reportedly promptly shot down.
Of course, we don’t know who the eventual choice will be so it’s too early to really celebrate. It is, nonetheless, worth reflecting on how far the anti-monopoly movement has come in just a few short years to make this possible. The revolving door between the Obama administration and Big Tech swung almost without notice. That’s really hard to imagine today.
Want more? Check out less than half of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week; we’ve been busy!
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