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The Realignment
600 | Hannah Garden-Monheit: Why Voters Feel Government Doesn't Deliver - Lessons from the Biden Administration
01:05:05
Hannah Garden-Monheit, former Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and co-author (with Tresa Joseph, of the Roosevelt Institute's report, Building a More Effective, Responsive Government: Lessons Learned from the Biden-Harris Administration, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Hannah discuss her interviews with 45 former Biden officials on their struggles with state capacity during the administration, why Marshall believes better "central casting" would better illustrate succesful governance, top recommendations for enhancing the federal governments ability to effectively deliver services and accomplish its goals, and the lessons for future state capacity efforts.
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- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment Confession Time. I really enjoyed this episode, but as a semi professional podcaster it also serves as a point of embarrassment. I recorded it with the Economic Liberties Project's hannahgarden Monheit back in early November. I ended up having technical difficulties and not being able to access the recording, so as these publication delays piled up after I found the recording, it just felt like I missed the moment and I just kept pushing it off. However, I'm finally able to rip the band aid off and publish this now evergreen episode for a couple of reasons. 1. The messenger and the Topic fascinate me Hannah is a former Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, where she worked on the development and implementation of consumer protection and competition issues. She's now once again, as I mentioned, a senior fellow at aelp, a think tank to the left of my now employer, the Niskanen Center. Last year she co wrote a report titled Building a More Effective Responsive Lessons Learned from the Biden Harris administration. They interviewed 45 former government officials who served in the Biden administration and share recommendations on how government ineffectiveness limited their ability to succeed and nothing to be fixed. And in the next go around, Effective and responsive government is a barely less than academic and wonky way of describing the phrase state capacity a priority area at Niskanin basically is government able to deliver on what the American people expect it to, and can it accomplish the ambitious missions it sets for itself? Because of Niskanin's centrist reputation and identity, state capacity work has become centrist coded. So I was excited to see how those to our left will handle and think about this topic to 2. Because of the type of work this podcast puts out, I get a lot of inbound from folks who already spent their careers in policy or are looking to break into the space in the first place in their undergraduate and graduate years. Even though state capacity isn't sexy as a topic, I've just noticed a disproportionate number of people who outreach to me are actually wanting to or already do work in this space. So I want to serve them and give them the content they need to help them do their jobs better or figure out where they take their career next over the next few years. And the best advice I can offer for any young person trying to get to D.C. is to work on a policy issue that is clearly in a growth phase because 2028 is clearly going to mark the reset point in our system. After more than 10 years of everything burning down, there's plenty of work to do in this space, especially when it comes to deciding what our next era of government is going to look like, regardless of what faction party ideology you identify with. 3 lastly, this is also the perfect episode to discuss my desire for left liberal fusion, not faction. There are some issues where candidates are just going to have to fight it out in the primaries and on the debate stage. State capacity just is not one of them. I will make a bet that we are not going to have a single primary determined by your answer to the question of how can we make America more effective when it comes to its government. And we definitely aren't going to say Lincoln Douglas style debates on state capacity on the debate stage. It's just too wonky and behind the scenes when it comes to what's actually going to happen and what that means instead is that this is an issue that's going to get worked out within think tanks and within transition teams. Basically very little public input on something that I actually think is desperately needed from a public perspective. So if there's a fusionist opportunity where collaboration can be a value add rather than just sort of pointless fighting that doesn't go anywhere, it is definitely in the effective government and delivery category. Hope you all enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Hannah Garden Monheit, welcome to the Reclaimment.
- [04:00]
B
Thanks so much for having me.
- [04:02]
A
I am very excited to chat with you. So I work at the Niskanen Center. We've done a lot of work on state capacity and abundance and implementation challenges both sort of looking retrospectively at what the Biden administration got right and wrong, but also thinking towards the future. I'm also on the Advisory council for the Recoding America Fund, which is Jen Pauka's new vehicle focus on these issues. So I was super pumped to see that Roosevelt had put together a really serious retrospective talking to more than 45 different people in the Biden administration, what their experiences when it came to government capacity, state capacity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think my first question would be how would you from the Roosevelt POV define this scope of work or space? Because maybe me using language like state capacity is like my centrist coding articulation of what the project is, but I'd love to hear what you're self understanding of what this is is.
- [04:59]
B
Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for the kind words and for having me. Words like state capacity can sound like sort of academic, but I think of it as like how do you get shit done when you have a Governing moment. And you know, this work came out of, for a lot, you know, a lot of us who are in the Biden Harris administration, you fully recognize that we came up short. Right. And so there's a lot of self reflection and, and self, you know, interrogation going on right now. And I think it's really important to learn from the experiences that we had inside government. And you know, frankly, I've worked across, I think, you know, by my count, I've worked in like eight different government offices, three branches of the federal government, a state government over the course of my career. And it's not unique to the Biden administration either that you can have really well intentioned public servants who are working really hard, again with the best of intentions, but find yourself kind of banging your head against a brick wall repeatedly trying to get things done. Because our government institutions are our capacities, what government is capable of doing are often just really not set up for a modern economy and all of the complexity of the problems that we really do need the government to play a role in solving.
- [06:19]
A
Yeah. And I actually shout out the specific report, so it's called Building a more Effective Responsive Government. Lessons learned from the Biden Harris Administration. So here's something I'm super curious about starting out here. So one of the takeaways in the report that the administration officials reflected was that they had a generational theory of change when it came to the things they were implementing. And that was sort of at the expense to a certain degree of focusing on shovel ready projects. I started hearing language on the generational change of like this is going to really be seen in 26, 27, 28, very early on, even in 2022, that's the sort of messaging that I was getting. And as someone who's not a wonk, but as someone who's more politically minded, that just did not make sense to me because it seemed to me especially because we're operating in an environment where people are just not going to believe that government works or does anything. It seems like you just needed at a political level. Right. And there's a mix of policy and politics here, just very ob shovel ready wins that you could do in a year or even six months or even a few weeks that would then give you the credibility to say this generational change thing is real. So I'd love to hear from you your understanding of how this theory of we're doing generational change came about. Because that's actually a political assessment that's not really even like a policy decision. There are different Projects that you could have emphasized.
- [07:46]
B
Yeah. So I think it's important to think about the sort of mix of policy portfolio of an administration. Which is part of what you're getting at, right. Is if you're going to do infrastructure and you're going to do generational change, you need, you need some points on the board to show people. But I think it's also about what are the mix of policy levers that you use. And so if we think about at the outset of the administration and this comes through in the interviews in the report, there were some more kind of broadly impactful pocketbook salient policies that were an original part of the Biden agenda. Affordable child care, paid family leave, for example. Those are things that may have hit people's pocketbooks more directly than saying, you know, we're going to build bridges and housing and so forth. But then those fell out of, in the, in the course of the legislative process. And I think, you know, one of the reflections is that we need, we needed a different mix of both the time horizons for infrastructure building. Right. But, but also a different kind of overall policy mix. So that you also had some things that you were pursuing, you know, that you had some strategies when those things fell out of the legislation to be showing. Okay, here are some things that we are doing in the immediate term to put money in people's pockets. You know, how housing often comes up as an example of this. Right. That like we very much have a supply gap problem when it comes to housing markets. And that is in many ways, you know, an infrastructure and construction project. But if you say to a working family who is struggling to make their rent right now, I'm going to build 3 million houses for you, you know, even two years from now, they're like, my rent is due on the first. Right. And so you really have to think about the timeline of your electoral mandate and having some policies that are going to be felt on the ground before you're asking people did I do a good job or not? But also the urgency of the economic frustrations that people are feeling in this country right now. And that as well, and I do
- [09:55]
A
from a future facing perspective. And you could totally push back on this, I would say if you're sitting, let's assume sort of left liberals come back into power in 2029, which is quite an assumption. But let's just make the assumption if you're sick because there's no world where advance administration is reading or implementing this report. So that's why I'm just positing that I would push back on using language around like pocketbook and affordability. Examples of ways that are going to generate sort of faith and sort of buy in for people. Because I hate to cite studies, but like there's this famous study that basically when things go well and we're talking in the pocketbook sense, so like when your salary goes up or when you have more money in your pocket, you're going to attribute that to like your own hard work. So like, okay, so I've got more money in my pocket. I've got an extra $200 a week. That's because, man, I really like crushed it at work this week. Like, you're not going to say to yourself, like, man, thank you Biden Harris administration for the. You pursued your legislative agenda, but when things go badly like inflation, you are going to say, man, Biden Harris, what have you done to me body? So it's not that you can't care about the pocketbook thing, but I think that the pocketbook experience, like a world where you didn't have Covid inflation and people's pocketbooks were in a great place, would have been a world where the vibes would have been better. But that doesn't translate necessarily into sort of like, you know, that's because of this, this, this, this or that. You know, you kind of saw this with the child tax credit expansion, right? Like we, you know, studies, we just straight up have child poverty in one year. And that did not then translate into everyone getting super excited to pursue this generational project. And famously, when that child tax credit expansion expired, you did not see a mass group of people knocking down the doors of their member of Congress who did not do that. So I just think it's so important that we understand that the mix that this thing could be good policies, but they're not gonna translate in the support sense. So I'd love to hear how you think about this.
- [11:52]
B
Yeah, I think two dimensions. So one is, you know, another theme of the report is that we need to like really be listening to people and not just assuming that we know what they need. I think most people like want to work. They want to be able to do the work, to be able to have, you know, a decent life for their families. I think most people don't like want just like a handout. Right. But there are also a set of policies that we need to facilitate the conditions for that. Right. We have right now economy where we have people who are working two, three jobs and still struggle to make ends meet while we have Other folks who have billions or even now looking like trillions. Right. I think there's a set of policy interventions that we need there, but we also have to shift how we think about how we choose our policy priorities to create the infrastructure in government where we're really going out and listening to people and hearing them say, this is what I need to set me up for success. Not just assuming that we in D.C. know what that is. And that is itself, by the way, a government capacity issue. Because, you know, one of the things that we talk about in the report is that the federal government is really set up to be in, like, passive inputs mode. We don't have. Right. Like, our. Our structures for public input are like themselves, take a lot of time and resources to use them. And we don't really have a toolkit in the federal government for proactively going out and, you know, holding a focus group, doing user testing, doing user research, holding, like, a lot of town halls in communities across the country. There's a capacity gap just when it comes to, like, who are you able to hear from when you're sitting in the federal government? And then the second point I would make, because you brought up the child tax credit, which comes up in the report, is one that I think would be a really valuable area for additional research because it is very much one where many of the interviewees were interrogating what happened there. Why did it not build the kind of support that people assumed that it would? And what the report talks about is this concept of policy feedback loops that you need to figure out ways in which your policies are tangibly felt but also traceable back to where they came from. And also, you know, have structures built in that empower people to, you know, support and defend them if they like them or, or, you know, advocate for their change if they don't. And, you know, it's. It's. I don't think we entirely know at this point. I think more research is needed on what exactly happened with the child tax credit. But, you know, like, one of the things that we've heard is, you know, the advanced monthly payments, they just show. Like, for many people, they just showed up in your bank account. And so, as you said, people may have said, like, oh, like, my bank account just looks a little better this month. Right. They didn't maybe necessarily connect the dots there. Right. And we didn't necessarily have, you know, we didn't build in, like, community groups being able to organize and help people access the benefit and understand how to advocate for it. And so forth there, you know, there's also thinking around like should, should we be leaning towards more universal policies over means tested policies? Right. Social Security and med, Medicare, are these like massively popular political success stories with a huge amount of durability now is some of that in fact, because they are not limited to low income people, but have the political power of, you know, middle class and upper middle class and even wealthy people benefiting from them too. So I think there's, there's a lot more work to be done to pin down precisely in our policy design. How do you engage in public agenda setting to make sure that you are choosing to prioritize things that like people actually want and matter to them and are the thing that they need to live their lives in the way that they want? And two, to be building in to your design. How do we set it up to make it durable if people in fact like it?
- [15:55]
A
You know, something I'm curious about is the degree to which people in our segments of politics have thought about the performance of politics in ways that probably make us uncomfortable. So it's funny, right? Like the child tax credit was transformational. Like once again just having child poverty just by doing that. And you think about how that didn't capture the public imagination, but you know, it did capture the public imagination. Like the stimulus checks, right? Like the stimmy that became a meme. And I remember when Trump like put his signature on it and made it very like Trumpy, everyone sort of toot tooted it. This wasn't like a left versus center. Everyone's sort of like, that's just like not the way that you do things. That's just sort of crass. But him just doing that turned it into a meme because it became a meme. It became an idea that people resonated with. So I'd be curious the degree to which you personally, and then also maybe the people you were interviewing are considering that maybe our sort of like 1990s and 2000s West Winging in norms of how you like perform politics just isn't actually suited to just the media and political environment we're in and how there are just ways we could be more creative just making that obvious. Like if that child's tax credit had just had Biden say signature aggressively on it in the wind. Biden is obviously a different performer than Trump is, but that's just like an example of how like you just really should be thinking about that stuff when it comes to design and implementation.
- [17:22]
B
Totally, totally with you on that. So one of the people who we held an event was Melissa Morales, who runs so Much Botantes, which is a Latino organizing organization. She wrote this incredible piece and she talked about this at our event, about her father's experience of those economic impact payments. And she describes how, you know, he went and he cashed his check and he called her up and he like, his hands were like literally shaking because it was the most amount of money he had ever held in his life in his hands in one time. And that image just like, boy, does that stick with me. Like, some of it is about like the bold, the boldness of what you're doing, doing right. Like, it was, it was an amount of money that was very, you couldn't just say like, oh, my bank account was like a little bit more this week. You were really going to know from the sum of money, some of it is the performance, right? There's a very different, a big difference in communication style between the Trump administration, the Biden administration. One of the other things that comes through in the report is that, you know, sometimes leaning into a controversy, sometimes picking a fight is kind of the thing you need to do to be able to break through in our very algorithm, algorithm driven, fractured media ecosystem. And I think we saw, we saw examples of some, some agencies that were better than others at doing this. But I think that is an important takeaway from our work on this report is that the, you know, the, the left, whether you're center left or left, left, right, needs to, needs to really grapple with the media environment. And how, how do you make sure that people actually see you and feel you fighting on their side?
- [19:10]
A
So this is a rift I've been working on for a while and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. And this is speaking to the fact that this is a Roosevelt Institute report. I would say the more and more I read about FDR's presidency, I just have so many more takeaways. This is what effective government looks like, not just in terms of public policy decisions, but the actual performance of it. So my actual area of focus is foreign and defense policy. So like I'm reading about the arsenal of democracy and an idea that I'm obsessed with were the dollar a year men. So this is when we're rearming and converting America's civilian, wartime civilian manufacturing infrastructure from building Fords and GMs or washing machines to just building warplanes and tanks. And one of the ways that they implemented this policy is they were created these dollar a yearman position where people like Bill Knudsen So he came from gm, he was given a dollar a year to be the face of our rearmament policy. And then he eventually becomes a three star general in terms of his actual role. So I hear that story and I'm just sort of like, okay. That was if you were to basically say who was a person who would have credibility with the populace on this policy. It's actually a immigrant who came to this country when they were eight and had literally helped build the Model T's manufacturing infrastructure and then was this big executive in the 1930s. And not an executive in the revolving door sense, but actually the person and who came up from the factory line could actually do this. So he had credibility. I interview a lot of folks from the Biden administration who worked on these policies, whether they're in the chip's office or whether they're working on EVs or broadband. And no offense to them, and no offense to you, your lawyer, but they're lawyers. Lawyers. They don't like convince we don't build
- [20:58]
B
things is one thing. Right. They don't have the operational expertise.
- [21:02]
A
And not just that, they don't look like they do. Right. Cause they know what I mean. And so that's why I'm just sort of like the New Deal and the arsenal of democracy had people who were at the front of things who just, you could just look at that person and say, oh, these people are serious. So I would just be curious. So, like, one of my proposals for if I could add my own recommendation would be like, bring back the dollar a year man idea in the sense of like, you know, insert gender inclusivity to that in the best sense of the term, in the sense that like, what if we. So perfect example. So we could debate Mark Cuban's politics in a bunch of ways. But one way that Mark Cuban has a lot of credit is that he's that person who's like the cost plus drugs guy. He's the guy who's using his wealth to make drugs affordable to people. So if I were saying I work in this administration in 2029, we're working on health care costs and affordability. This big thing for me, I would say let's make Mark Cuban a dollar a year man. Not that he's working in the federal government every single day, but whenever we're doing a media tour or going on podcasts, he's there as a representative of this idea. So I'd love to hear your thoughts, thoughts on this because I just, I think this is what's really missing.
- [22:12]
B
That's interesting. So I don't think of it as just like the face of things. Right? Like in some ways what you're describing sounds a little bit like the, what President Trump's sort of like view of like we should have leaders who come from central casting for that thing. I think you need, you need people who can do the, you know, the public facing work, but it's also just so important to have people in the day to day of programs who have the operational expertise and knowledge of an industry to get things done. Right. Like the VA is like the largest hospital system in America. Right. You need people who have run a hospital system to be working there. You mentioned chips, right? Like we heard this a lot in the course of our interviews about chips, Medicare, drug price negotiation, the infrastructure law at DOT that like you really needed to bring into government people who had the experience of actually doing the thing that you were trying to do. So like you know, the existing capacity at CMS center for Medicare and Medicaid services, right. The, the folks, the existing people who are there as, as well intentioned and hard working as they were, don't have the background of sitting down across the table from a large pharmaceutical company and negotiating. So you know, they had to bring in a bunch of deals lawyers to do that. So like we very much need to be thinking about where do you find those skill sets and how do you bring them into government for like as you're suggesting? I think a tour of duty mod is going to be really important going forward as we think about federal service. At the same time we have to think about conflicts of interest and what protections do we put in place to make sure that those folks who are parachuting in are doing it out of a public spirited, public minded sense of I'm going to step out of the private sector to do my part to solve this problem. But not, you don't want the version of what we are seeing right now where you know, maybe they say that's what they're doing, but actually, you know, they're very much pursuing their own private, private interests. And I think those things are, you know, I think those things are navigable. So what we heard from folks who had worked on the CHIPS program, for example, was that they were just, you know, they were really thoughtful about, you know, had at a very senior level engaging with the, the folks from the private sector who had the relevant expertise to make sure they were vetting. You know, are you coming to do this out of, out of a desire? Because you realize like, here's a once in a lifetime opportunity to protect our national security interests and having a robust domestic semiconductor industry. But also ask those people to make some sacrifices too in terms of, you know, not having individual, not holding individual stock stocks in companies that would be benefiting from the program. In the modern age. I think you can very much put your money into mutual funds or ETFs or whatever. Right. There is room to remove the potential conflicts of interest that would happen if you had somebody from IBM coming in to do chips who's still owning stock in IBM. Right. We can navigate these things. But I think you're totally right to recognize that there is a lot of ingenuity in the private sector that we should harness, but with appropriate protections.
- [25:34]
A
Yeah. And the thing is, I really wasn't meaning to dismiss expertise or people who are actually doing the day to day work, labor, et cetera, the studies, all those things on it. But I do just want to push a bit on the use of Trump's term central casting, because maybe not in your sense, not to sort of impute things on you, but when I see that in public media, it's used very disparagingly, but I actually think we should just have front facing people who are from central. Cassidy, I think Trump is actually right about this. And you know, my, my wife Olivia is a colleague of yours at the American Economic Liberties Project. And you know, we had this experience where we went down and visited her very Trumpy family. I always bring up these anecdotes. This is sort of my, like I'm Thomas Friedman, I'm talking, talking to a taxi cab person, you know, and I use that to. And did these conversations happen or not? I'm not sure. But these really did happen. Believe me, audience, they just like did not believe that the Biden administration's like manufacturing agenda was like a real thing. Like straight up, like they just did not believe it was a thing. And not only did they not believe that like factories weren't going, but they did not think this was a priority. So I actually think that like in an era such as ours where everything is so decentralized and you just don't have like mainstream figures that people trust, if you just use the central casting model, I think that would solve like a huge percentage. So I would just say we can both focus on expertise, do the tour of duty model you're talking about, manage conflicts of interest, but also just say every single. Because one of the big recommendations in the report to pull from the actual language here is there need to be big Swings that you're ready to take on day one. My recommendation for 2029 is every single one of those big swings needs a central casting public representative of it who has credibility with voters and audiences. That is not just purely government.
- [27:27]
B
That's interesting. So I don't disagree with your point at all about the public face. It can be challenging to find the unicorn who has both the manage a federal bureaucracy and also know how to operationalize the intervention you're trying to do and have the communications and political skills to go out and talk about it. Those are three functions that every agency needs at a very senior level. If you can find them in one human being, by all means, great. But, like, let's at least solve for having agency management teams that are hitting all of those and are working in close tandem. Yeah, I think I'm, I'm. I've spent a lot of time at the ftc, so I'm a little bit partial. But, you know, Chair Khan is an example of somebody who was, you know, the agency was, was leaning in and doing the work, but she was very much also going out into the country and explaining why the fights that she, she was picking we thought were worth it. You know, similarly, Secretary Buttigieg comes up in the report as somebody who, you know, when there was a fight worth having, was very actively going out and, and communicating about why the Department of Transportation was doing what they were doing and not being shy about what, what venues he went to to talk about it, but also not being afraid to be a little punchy about it and pick some fights and lean into them.
- [28:51]
A
I'd love to understand, not to delve too deep into this topic, but understand your understanding of what. So, for example, you offered me the correct caution of let's find a unicorn. If there's a unicorn, great. But you really have to understand the interagency process and all these different dynamics. And I think Lina Khan's a very great example because she's both a main character. She's obviously chairing Zoran's transition. She is very publicly facing. She has her own ideas. She's actually a good example of what I think a effective leader should look like moving forward, putting aside debates over her policies, but to push on this. Javier Brassera was the HHS secretary, and he was a career politician, lawyer, who was not an expert on public health. Health was not a good communicator or particularly compelling. And I have heard him say in venues, quote, you know, like, we really worked on, like, restoring trust and health and all these different issues and like, we just didn't get that. And my reaction, I should have probably said this during the Q and A session was like, well, yeah, dude, like you're a politician. Like, why would you possibly, if I were to say to myself, like, who is this person who could like, if the goal was like restoring, like implementing successful COVID policies and then also restoring trust. Trust a 30 year long politician. You know, I should disclose my conflicts of interest. I interned for him in 2013. So like that's, that's, that's, that's my dynamic here. But like, that's just not who I would sort of say there. So like how does expertise work? Because you're suggesting I'm bringing up unicorns, but we make senators cabinet secretaries when they are not experts in things. Lina Khan is like, he's not Lena Khan. So how should we understand how this pro, how people understand, understand how this process even works? Do you know what I mean?
- [30:33]
B
Yeah. So, you know, one of the recommendations in the report is like, we should not be just picking people based on some political box checking exercise, which is not. I don't want to throw shade on Secretary Becerra.
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A
Yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying to
- [30:48]
B
force you to take a stand.
- [30:49]
A
I was describing a dynamic, right then.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah, there's, there is absolutely a dynamic in, in which often, you know, administrations get filled out with kind of like, oh, we need to find a spot for this person who was a political ally or, you know, and that like you kind of think about the Rubik's Cube of filling out your administration that way instead of thinking about like, okay, here's what we need to accomplish on the ground out of this agency, right? Like, who is the person who is coming in for this very specific mission because they want to do that mission, not because they're looking at like, you know, the next step in their political career, right? Like if anybody is like, comes into government and says like, like I'm willing to go anywhere, like maybe we should be a little bit skeptical, right? Like you should have a thing that you're going to do at the place that you are going. I'll also say though, like, I think it there, there's this like personality, communications, boldness piece. But the, the policy also has to match, right? So, you know, the policies at HHS come up quite a bit in the report. You know, Medicare, drug price negotiation, right. Like this was something that has, you know, has been on the left's wish list for decades, right? And like we finally did it. It was A huge legislative lift, a huge victory. But, but caveat, right? Like the, the timeline for it being implemented, right, like stretched out to 2026. So first problem there, mismatch with your electoral mandate. Right. Second problem, it only applied to 10 drugs. Third problem, it was, you know, lowering the prices relative to where they were, but still not that cheap. And then another problem, like, kind of hard to explain to somebody who's got just like a busy life and they're, you know, maybe they're reading about, they're like learning about it for like 15 seconds on tick tock, right? Like, how do you explain. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna sit across the table, we're gonna negotiate. Da, da, da, da. You know, the counter example that somebody gave in the report, and this was somebody who was very senior at HHS was like capping insulin prices. Like you can just say $35 insulin, people get it. You can implement it much more quickly. You know, that's one that still doesn't touch, you know, as many people because it's relevant to a particular slice. But like building into your thinking about what your policy priorities are, how are people going to receive this? How are we, are we going to be able to communicate about it succinctly in a way that breaks through? How many people is it going to touch? Are we going to be able to do it on the relevant time frame? Like all of that we need to be thinking about in tandem with the like, who, who is the face of it?
- [33:32]
A
And something I'm curious about because the, you know, version of the report I read didn't go into this much. How much or how do you think from the top political leadership can play a role in like getting that implementation done faster? So like the two stories that I'm excited by, once back to the arsenal of democracy, FDR just says we're going to get to 50,000 planes a year. And that was a not an empirically driven number. He just was like, I'm going to make this bold. And we reached it, we reached it, we got there. But he was like, we're going to get to 50,000. We're only doing low four figures, but we're going to do 50,000 planes a year. I'm setting that goal. I'm putting my political career in many ways on the table with that. And then put aside the politics of Josh Shapiro. I think Josh Shapiro gave a perfect modern day example of what this looks like when the Pennsylvania Freeway highway collapsed. And he was like, we're going to get this done quickly and they got it done quickly. So I think to what degree would a leader in 2029? So if you're saying the implementation thing. So I love that example of the price negotiations, 2026, that's, I think that's a, a disastrous policy outcome because people need this now. They don't need this four years from now. And they also, and that's also an implementation, just that it should not take that long to do it. How much would a president coming in once. And once again, Josh Shapiro is not an expert on highway reconstruction. FDR is not an expert in converting your industry to build planes faster. But they were just willing to take a risk and say you're going to get that done faster. And as they then hit the different bottlenecks in both of those stories I told with the highway and with the airplanes, it was easier to get over those bottlenecks when you know from the top. But this is an expectation. So I'd love for you to talk about how without asking you to purely comment on like Biden moving forward. What can political leaders at the top of administration do to set the tone, to give people the buy in, to frankly kick down doors and get things done. Done.
- [35:34]
B
I think it's like, you know, if there was one thing that you could do to change things, it's that, right. Like top, top down leadership behind legible goals. Right. Like what is the outcome we are driving to for. Say it loudly, say it up top. Be very clear with people and, and empower your team. Right. Be willing to break some eggs to get it done. Like yes, a lot of the report is about procedural sludge that's built up in our government processes and we should fix that. We should right size the processes and adapt them for our modern economy. But you know, it also gets missed that when you have that kind of political leadership and clear goal setting, people cut through the sledge and it like usually things get done. You know, one example of that is the direct file free tax filing program where you just rip. Rip. Yes, yes. Very, very sad couple of weeks for that. But that's one where like they brought together like cross disciplinary team that was all rowing in one direction. You know. Another one that's become sort of an orphan in policy space is the COVID response. Right. Like this is an area where President Trump to his credit with operation Warp Speed said like we're going to do vaccines faster than anybody thinks is possible. Set a clear goal, you know, put bold policy, bold investment behind it took on some risk. Right. Of diversifying what technologies to invest in, knowing that, you know, you didn't know what was going to emerge from the process and probably you would spend some money on some things that didn't work. And then, you know, to President Biden's credit, rolled into office having inherited, you know, being on a path to vaccine. But you needed to get the shots and arms. And there's, you know, there were clear goals of here, here are the numbers of shots we need to get in arms on what case. And there was a team that was very much organized around that to, you know, break down barriers and get it done. So you're absolutely right that it's kind of everything. And there, you know, there are examples of it, but it is very much something that as we look at the landscape of potential future standard bearers, is it somebody who's going to be, be willing to say very clearly, and it comes with risks? Right. If you say very clearly, I want to do, you know, 50,000, then people are going to look back and say, like, did you? Right. They're like, you can shy away from that because it feels politically risky, but it is also like really the key to executing and keeping everybody focused and moving in the same direction.
- [38:16]
A
So two last question topics before we get to just going quickly through all of the chapters of the recommendations and takeaways, something I really worry about as a political person who's interested in policy. This is basically the nightmare scenario of an IC building, especially as lots of Democrats, liberals, lefties, whatever, are feeling excited after the election results and maybe a good midterms result. What are the things that we're going to do? Because one of the recommendations of the report was take big swings on day one. And I think as with the highway, the highway is obvious. And no one needed to tell Josh Shapiro that people care about infrastructures and highways. So that did not require years of study of what's this thing we do. What mattered was his internal ability to say, I'm going to go with FDR, World War II has started and there's this very obvious need to focus on that. But most of these big swings, unless it's a Covid emergency, do not work that way. Like, I actually think developing what those big swings are is like a two or three year at a minimum project. Because to your point, and this is one of the recommendations of the report, like the day one prep actually requires a lot of work too. So the nightmare scenario I see evolving, though, is pushback from fellow centrists where they basically said, well, you know, getting together and working on this is sort of like, it's messy. There's gonna be coalitional arguments about like, what's the actual priority. Like, I could totally see a centrist Jake Auchincloss disagreeing with Alina Khan type about what those big swings are. And their sort of response is, let's let this get litigated during the Democratic primary. It would be a contest of ideas and that's how we get to what the swings are. But I actually don't think that's true. I don't think that's actually how campaigns work. Once you're in the South Carolina primary and once people are dropping out, this is not actually going to be a contest of ideas. And that's sense. So how do we. So what I want to see happen is I want people across the coalition that's going to comprise anyone winning because no one coalition has like 50 plus one. So this is going to have to be an amalgamation no matter what. Like, Biden's 2020 campaign at its transition team level was a mix of Bernie people and a mix of Biden people and a mix of Warren people. Right. It was a real mix. How do we successfully get people in our world to start working on the big swings now and not let people who are frankly too politically minded and not wonky enough? I'm always dunking on the wonks, but like, this is where the wonks are actually. Right. How do we get this together? Because I think that if we take the political people's advice and let the debate stage in 2028 sort this out, it's going to lead to Biden all over again in the sense that no one actually agrees what the priorities are. There's no messaging, there's no planning. You can't fix this in a two month principle transition period. Sorry to rant, but like I just see this starting up again and that's really frustrating to me.
- [41:12]
B
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right to recognize that you, you like the degree to which you have to be ready to hit the ground running on day one is not at all consistent with just waiting for a transition moment to start getting things in order. Right. Like the work asks, you start now. It is a real challenge to know in terms of like the particulars of particular of policies without knowing who will emerge from that process. Like what, what you know, it should be their vision. Right. And so you really, the field needs to figure out how to do the work in a way that looks, I think like kind of like an options menu is, is one Answer, right. Like we sort of structured this report very much by design not to be like this is the, this is the one way and the only way. It was like here's 161 ideas that you can choose from. So thinking about, you know, what, what are the like sort of pieces to create maximum optionality for whoever emerges from this process to be set up for success. Because the stakes are just, they are. I know everybody hates it when you say they're existential but like our democracy is at stake here guys. Like we have to be ready to move out very quickly to show people that democracy can actually work, that it can actually deliver tangible results, results quickly for people. And that is, that needs to be a one team effort. The other thing that I would say is that when it comes to figuring out, you know, to your question, like what, what is the thing? Right, that's an answer that like I don't, personally, I don't think it should come from. Like it's not like what does Ezra Klein think is the thing? Or what does Lena Khan think is the thing. It's what do the people need? Right? So let's go out and let's do the deep listening to hear from working people what's not working for, for, for, for you and what, what would make it easier for you to succeed in your life? And hopefully if we do that and we do it in good faith and we really listen, we're going to start moving towards more of a consensus about what the right solutions are because it shouldn't just be like our own sort of DC centric. Are you an abundance? Are you an anti monopolist, Are you a centrist? We need to be focused on like what, what do the people who government is supposed to be responsive to? What do they want out of it?
- [43:33]
A
Yeah, and I think the, and this isn't what you're saying, but there's like a warning here. What you are describing with listening and mission is totally correct. But I worry that the D.C. version of that is like let's run a bunch of polls that is actually not quite the same thing. There's a version where some operators are. Yeah, exactly. That's why you ran all these polls and it shows that like the top 10 priority way. That's actually not, that's not the same thing. Because this is why I really want to focus on your usage of the word mission driven. So the way that I would actually think about this is and if you are going to do polls or do focus groups, I would focus on what problems Are communities and constituents our Americans actually facing so that you could prioritize? That is different than saying we're polling because we've literally seen this. We're pulling the child tax credit versus direct file versus versus like restoring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's useless. That's not helpful. That also doesn't lead to a politics of translation because the way that I would think about this is, and we see this consumer sentiment is reaching really, really. It's getting really, really, really low. So one of my takeaways would be like, yeah, well, that's why it's insane that the Trump administration gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau amidst all of this different dynamics. So the problem is that consumers feel precarious that there's all these problems that they're facing. So rather than poll, do we bring back the CFPB on day one or not? I would want to find out what's the actual problem. And then to your point about the mission driving the people you're bringing into government and the teams, the people, I would say, okay, so if we need to attack this consumer sentiment problem, the CFPB is this huge opportunity that frankly, when I talk to sort of as you know, Lina Khan makes centrists light their hair on fire. But I'm trying to get my centrist crew to think more about what are unifying things. We could coalition with the left on. Everyone always says, yeah, it was crazy that they got rid of the cfpb, right? So that is an example of an Elizabeth Warren left populist win that even the anti Mandani center is actually fine with. They probably didn't support it in 2011, but they're fine with it now. So like there's a factional theory of politics there that matters. There's a, like this is response to a problem. And there's one thing we could do on day one. So I think that's the better version versus I think the very bad version we're actively seeing now, frankly, which is like, let's just like pull these like solutions and these ideas.
- [45:56]
B
I think that's right. And I also think this, you know, a deeper understanding of what are the challenges that people are facing in their lives. Like this is not a one off, off thing, right? Like we should be building this into what we do on an ongoing basis. Like this should be a like a year, year route. This is not on every two years and every four years. It is very much like we need to be in community with working people to solve the problems together. Like we can't, we can't be taking away their agency. And I think you're right that there, there are lots of things where, you know, maybe people will have differences around the policy details, but like the policy wants, we can figure that out. Let's, let's, let's figure out like what are the sort of like big picture buckets of problems that we need to fix in our economy. And let's, and let's work together from there.
- [46:52]
A
So then the other quick question before we spend the last 10 minutes just going over the broad outlines of the recommendations and takeaways. What do you think about the abundant state capacity, Bernie, sort of debate? Because I think what I said to you before we started recording, I think what's exciting about this report, and maybe there's a world where we should do something with Roosevelt and Askanen around this, because we think about this very seriously too, is I think all these recommendations are one that everyone could take something from. And it's an example of sometimes it's vapid and insincere to say we can all Kumbaya and get along, but there's actually a lot of Kumbaya get along when if you ask people generically in our space, oh, Roosevelt, they're definitely not on Team Abundance. This report is very abundant for me. It's not me saying you need to say you're joining Team Abundance. It's just that the actual. Because I think this, and I think this is praise of Roosevelt and Niskanen, because I think both our state capacity work and this report are focused on a problem. The problem is government is not able to deliver what it needs to deliver. What's put aside the day, what it needs to deliver, just like the problem cannot deliver. Because we all agree on that. There's a huge opportunity just to work together where our labels aren't going to be as important. So I'd love to get like your thoughts on that before we get to the report.
- [48:12]
B
Yeah. So I am 1000% with you that there's a huge amount of overlap here and we've gotten like frankly, really positive feedback from the, the sort of abundance coded crowd. I think there really is a very real shared desire to clear out the procedural sludge. Right. Size our processes and really focus on orienting ourselves around outcomes. Right. Like when, when you come into office. Right. You should be able to enact the people chose you. Right. And part of democracy is you have to be able to execute the thing that they, they sent you there to do in the time that they sent you there to do it. So whatever, whatever your underlying substantive policy is, right, like that is a basic premise of a functioning democratic system. Democratic in the little details, right. You know, that said, there are places where there's space, I think, between the progressive economic left and the abundance. Abundance set. I also, I don't want to put words in the mouths of people who come, come from your world like it, you know, it can be a bit of a Rorschach test, I think. But you know, if, if you read it, that there are at least some people who describe themselves as abundance folks who think that, that what that means. And maybe you'll correct me if I'm wrong. There's nobody who says this and it's just like an infighting mischaracterization. But like, like if what you are saying is that you should not just deregulate government but also deregulate the economy itself, right. If your view is let's just get the government out of the way and have the private sector go forth without any government oversight or intervention, like if that's what it is about, then certainly we part ways there because I think the vision expressed in the Roosevelt report and you know, frankly, probably most or all of the contributors to the report, right, is that government has a really important role to play in shaping markets in the public interest. And we can, you know, there's certainly a spectrum of how heavy a hand. But you know, the, the sort of basic principle that, you know, we tried 40 years of laissez faire trickle down economics and it didn't go well for working people. Right. Like that is how we ended up in an economy where we have a handful of billionaires who have all of this power over our lives, over our government, while there are other people who are struggling to eat even though they have multiple jobs. Right? Like that 40 year project of dismantling government's ability to stand up for the public interest in the way that FDR for example, did. Right. Like that is a big part of the story of how we got here. And so, you know, if abundance means, and I'm not, again you tell me, right, but if abundance means, like, oh, we should actually just get rid of regulation of the economy and oversight of big business then, then yes, there, there is, there is, there is difference there. That's not to say there aren't plenty of places where you can still work to get other. But there will be gaps for sure.
- [51:32]
A
Yeah, that's really interesting because I think you've actually gotten to a good tension point within The I won't say abundance movement. I hate when people say that because, like, a movement. The time I spent hanging out with the left has given me a pretty sort of strong rubric for like, what's like a movement and what's not. And I would not describe our crew of think tanks and like wonky elected officials as like a movement. And that's okay. Like, not every single. There are different jobs to be done here. And I think we should be very comfortable with that. But the tension that you're getting at is that there are a bunch of different organizations and individuals who've like used the word abundance and people use the word abundance. Before Ezra and Derek used the word abundance, they did not come up with the term. And this is where the tension comes in. So one of the costs of there being so many different voices is that like, different visions have been like, left out. And I think Ezra actually has done a really good job of like making this clear in his vision. But this version of the vision has not been, I think, highlighted enough by Ezra. And frankly a lot of abundance orgs are uncomfortable with it that like Ezra, and he said this on a recent episode, that like, he sees abundance as a part of like a renewed American liberalism that like, just does not work. And I very much agree with that version of abundance in the sense that like, hey, like, I actually want government to work and I care about enhancing state capacity. So the reason why I'm not a neoliberal, beyond the fact that I'm funded by anti neoliberal foundations, is that neoliberals at a core level did not care about the question of state capacity. A neoliberal looks at the state not being able to do things and they say, wait, why is the state even trying to accomplish something in the first place? That's the tight answer of why the Ezra version is not neoliberalism. But the point is, if this is not the whole thing, but a part, an arm, a leg of American liberalism. Also within American liberalism is the frankly anti corporate, making sure people don't feel like they're getting smacked on by the a private sector part of the project that y' all are working on. So like, in that sense, I think like Lina Khan and abundance are compatible because like we should have worker non competes. We should have like a real antitrust policy and we should also have state capacity. So within that version there's no conflict. I think where there is conflict is a, you know, there are a bunch of people who got into abundance because they're into housing Policy and in housing policy, like that is just a strict. Obviously we could debate like the public, like who's doing the building? Is it public sector, is it private, whatever. But like the question is so just deregulatory in nature where like a lot of even anti abundance people will say like, look, there really is like bad zoning. But there have been a bunch of people who've come into this policy debate space who are not used to thinking there are other things we're trying to do too. So they're just like, our answer is deregulating housing markets. And then they come into this abundance debate and they talk to people like you and they're like, well you're talking about. They're like, but no, no, like that has nothing to do with my thing. But it's like, no, this stuff has to be very like very much put together that way. And then there are also people to the center and the right of the abundance thing who don't see their work as being core of the. They don't see their project as rooted in American liberalism in the sort of like left center, you know, left liberal sense. Like, they do not see their abundance project as rooted like continuing FDR's work. I think of my version and Ezra's version as being like that. But that's where this gap comes in. So I think that was actually like helpful to sort of get help people understand like these various. Let me put it this way. You weren't putting words in every single abundance person. You were putting word. But I think you were actively conveying how some people in the abundance movement feel. And I think we should be honest about that. So in this last session.
- [55:04]
B
Yeah, can I clarify one thing? I just want to get out that like when I think of our competition policy, which is an area near and dear my to my heart, I don't think of it as anti corporate. Right. I think of it as pro corporate and antitrust. Right. Like, one of the things that we really saw at the FTC was, you know, small businesses, independent entrepreneurs who are also getting crushed by having like a, a few corporations that are able to entrench themselves and, and, and keep other people from competing just on the merits of, of, you know, we want a robust private sector in which companies are focusing on can you make a better product, can you make it cheaper? Not like what are the set of financial gains and schemes that I can come up with to like make my chart go up and right, like go right and up. We want to think about like what is the value in the real economy and have our business community able to focus their talent on that. So I just wanted to clarify that. Sorry.
- [56:10]
A
For sure. No, I think every, Every single policy crew, I think, needs some. We all need to do, like, messaging exercises, because I've not heard that. And I, I know about your pov. I've. I've heard different language of different people. So everyone struggles with this, right? Like, we're totally. No one is in control, because no one is in control of anything. No matter how big their podcasts are, how well funded their, like, think tanks are. There's so many different. And then this is also another. Like, if you work on this over two or three years, like, you could actually get that in sync and that actually, like, really, really, really matters and
- [56:43]
B
like, bad incentives to, like, nitpick with each other rather than how do we move out together?
- [56:49]
A
So for the last section, let's just quickly go through. So I'll read all, all eight of just like the titles and I'll just pick two or three that you could just provide comment on that I, I think would be relevant to my audience than a scanning audience. So the first one is relentlessly prioritize bold, resonant and timely policies. We talked about that. Chapter two, fling open doors and positively engage with the public. We talked about that. Three, recalibrate the executive branch toolkit for an era of hostile courts and a dysfunctional Congress. Didn't talk about that. I think that one's pretty obvious if you're into a show like this. For speed and scale, corporate accountability enforcement. 5. Sorry. 4 was remove red tape that slows regulatory implementation. 5, speed and scale corporate accountability enforcement. 6, modernize government and abolish needless paperwork. 7, deploy federal funding faster and more efficiently. We talked about that. And eight, quickly build modern nimble teams post doge. So the one I would love.
- [57:50]
B
The.
- [57:50]
A
The two I'd love to pick out here would just be. Let's go with removing red tape and then modernizing government, abolishing needless paperwork. So just give us like, your broad summary of the POV in the report on those two priority areas.
- [58:08]
B
Yeah, so the red tape chapter, we do talk about other, other tools, but that, that particular chapter is focused on regulations in particular. So. So, you know, do it doing rules, rulemakings essentially. And, you know, one of the big lessons learned of that is that the time horizon for promulgating a rule is just a total mismatch to an electoral mandate. And so, you know, the Biden Harris administration finalized over 300 significant rules in 20, 24. Right. Which means that, that they didn't have a chance to come into effect. They didn't have a chance to be felt. You didn't have a chance to see the litigation process through. And the reason that we uncovered for that is that there's just like a lot of time consuming sequential make work that goes into those processes and it's often done in like a very legalistic way. So like you know, for example, this is wonky but you know, on, on rulemaking too often agencies structure a team as like policy people draft a rule. Then it goes to the economists who try to tally up the cost and benefits. Then it goes to the lawyers who like identify a bunch of legal risks. Then they all have to like sort out the things that were identified along the chain among themselves. And then it goes to oira, sorry the Office of Information and Regulatory affairs where a bunch of career, a career staff like then act as like, you know that this is President Reagan's design of a wire act as like skeptical gatekeepers who try to poke holes in the regulation. That, that is not a process that is set up to move to like bring your best expertise to bear at the right stage of the process to like move through your process less efficiently. And also, you know, if you are, if you come from a part of the ideological spectrum where you believe in robust regulation of the economy, then you know, maybe don't adopt an institutional framework that was expressly adopted for the purpose of curtailing regulation. So that's kind of the, the point of that chapter is like let's rework those processes. Let's, you know, for example, I worked on the, I led the team that worked on the non compete span at the Federal Trade Commission. That was a team. I was organized so that you had lawyer, economist, policy person, engagement folks all working together from the beginning organized around the mission. And you're not neglecting the economist's expertise, you're not neglecting the litigator's expertise. You're just, but you're, you're working together to just oriented around what the problem on the ground and how to, how do we solve that instead of like I'm going to send this to you to like, you know, just like tally up costs and benefits like sort of rotely in isolation as opposed to doing the economic analysis that's like actually useful for decision making. So that is that chapter. The other one that you mentioned was the abolishing needless paperwork which is about how. So first of all, I'll go back to the Direct File example, may it rest in peace. Hopefully it will rise from the ashes again someday. But, you know, that's, that is an example where we saw that when the government has this close touch point with citizens, if you make that experience, like actually good and easy and helpful, it can really improve people's trust in government. So, you know, people who used Direct File said that it increased their trust in the IRS by 8. Like 86% of them said it increased their trust on the IRS. Like, I'm guessing, probably the most hated government institution in America. Right? So, like, let's, let's, let's give people more of those moments that rebuild trust in people. Second, we have a lot of missed opportunities when it comes to benefits and services that people are entitled to. So by One estimate, over 140 billion in unclaimed. There are $140 billion in unclaimed benefits each year. So those are things that Congress enacted that said, you know, people are entitled to this, but we have all of this paperwork and administrative burden that gets in the way of people actually accessing the things that they're entitled to. You know, a lot of times that sort of sludge accrues because we have a very robust culture of saying we need to protect against waste, fraud and abuse, and that that is important to do. But we also need to think about if we layer on process after process after process for purposes of getting to like, literally zero fraud ever. Like, what, what is the downside? What is the risk? The flip side of that, for people who are entitled to the thing, they are eligible, but like, they can't get the paperwork, they can't get through the system to prove it. And I actually think from talking to technologists, like, we actually don't have to choose if we, if we use technology and modernize how we use technology, we can get to a point where we are very accurate in our delivery, where we eliminate the opportunities for fraud, but we actually are give people the things to which that they are entitled. So some of this is about dramatically expanding technologist capacity across government. Right. I think there are a lot of folks who like, were kind of hoping that Doge would do it for real in a sincere way, and then they didn't. There's a huge opportunity for the left to do it in a very real way and really revolutionize, like, you know, take it as a Phoenix moment to build from the the ashes something that is like, very nimble and tech savage. Some of this is also about, you know, this is wonky, but like, better data sharing. Right. So, like, one of the examples in the report is that, right, like, agencies can't access your income data even though the IRS holds it. So you end up having to, like, try to submit documentation through, you know, often through some, like, kludgy process. It's information that the government already has in hand. Surely we can figure out how to have a safe, secure, trusted system in which, if the government already knows a thing, you don't have to tell it to them.
- [64:45]
A
Again, if we can build 50,000 planes a year, we can probably do that. I'd like to hope one would help. Hannah, this has been great. Thank you so much for joining me on the realignment. The report is linked, and I look forward to hearing what folks think about it.
- [65:02]
B
Thanks so much for having me.