On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School Jason Furman, who served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama and on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council under President Bill Clinton, said that people have a negative view of the economy despite messaging by the Biden administration on the economy because “Households got into a deep hole because of COVID, because of all the inflation that emerged.” And that while there has been progress made, people are still in that hole.
After Furman argued that President Biden’s budget would be better on the deficit than the one by House Republicans, co-host Poppy Harlow asked, “I was thinking a bit this morning about why there is this big disconnect between what the Biden administration notes are facts on the economy being pretty good and how people at home feel, not just Republicans, but Democrats, about their economic situation and what it costs them to live and provide for their family. I thought back to John McCain in 2008 and the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and it was very different and that was a different time and the fundamentals were not strong. But does the Biden administration risk a moment like that if they keep messaging Bidenomics this way without conceding, we get your pain on groceries, on mortgages, on rent?”
Furman responded, “Look, I’m not a message expert, but just the facts: Households got into a deep hole because of COVID, because of all the inflation that emerged. They’re digging out of that hole now. They are making progress in terms of wages outstripping inflation, but they’re not all the way out of the hole yet. And that’s the situation that we’re in now, progress, but not all the way there. How exactly you message that, I’ll leave that to others.”
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