What’s on Deck for 2020

Rebecca sits down with Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Angela Hanks of the Groundwork Collaborative, for a preview of the year to come and the issues, stories, trends, opportunities, and threats to watch in 2020 when it comes to poverty and inequality. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

Happy new year, Off-Kilter fam! As we get our bearings for the coming year — and the start of a new decade — we couldn’t think of a better way to kick off 2020 than bringing in two of our favorite wonks (and their crystal balls) for a preview of the year to come, and the issues, stories, trends, opportunities, and threats we should all be watching when it comes to poverty and inequality, many of which are getting buried with everyone so focused on impeachment and the looming specter of war.

This week’s guests:

Jared Bernstein, senior fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities & former chief economist to VP Biden (@econjared)

Angela Hanks, deputy executive director, Groundwork Collaborative (@angelahanks)

For more on this week’s topics:

• Read more from Jared, including the WaPo op-eds he references in this week’s episode
• Learn more about how the Groundwork Collaborative is working to advance a progressive economic worldview at www.groundworkcollaborative.org and find their polling, research, and other resources here
• Stay up to date on the public charge rule, as litigation to keep it from taking effect continues to make its way through the courts, at www.protectingimmigrantfamilies.org
• Learn more about Trump’s backdoor attack on Social Security disability benefits through the upcoming #CripTheVote twitter chat on 1/12/2020 at 7 pm EST.

This week’s transcript:

♪ I work and get paid like minimum wage

sights to hit the class by the end of the day

hot from downtown into the hood where I stay

the only place I can afford ’cause my block ain’t saved

I spend most of my time working, trying to bring in…. ♪

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

Happy New Year, Off-Kilter family! As we get our bearings for the coming year and the start of a new decade, I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off 2020 than bringing in two of my favorite wonks and their crystal balls for a preview of the year to come and the issues, stories, trends, opportunities, and threats we should all be watching when it comes to poverty and inequality, many of which are getting buried with everyone so focused on impeachment and the looming specter of war. Those two wonks are Jared Bernstein and Angela Hanks. Jared Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He’s also a former chief economist to Vice President Biden. Jared, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

JARED BERNSTEIN: Thank you for inviting me. I can’t think of a better way to start the new year.

VALLAS: Well, I’m excited too. Angela Hanks is the deputy executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, which is working with partners across the movement to advance a progressive economic worldview. Angela, it’s great to hear your voice. It’s been way too long.

ANGELA HANKS: Thanks so much for having me here.

VALLAS: Well, I really appreciate both of you for taking the time to come back on the show and for dusting off your crystal balls, which are going to get a lot of use for this particular episode. Sorry, not sorry. So, I’d really love to kick us off on a positive note, particularly given how often this show has focused on the bad and the ugly, given the current administration. So, let’s start with some things that we’re excited about. And I’m going to sort of give you guys both an opportunity to talk about the top three things that you’re most excited about for the year ahead. And Jared, we’ll start with you. What’s one of the things you’re most excited about?

BERNSTEIN: So, number one on my list of three is the benefits of full employment, a full-employment economy. I don’t think we’re quite at full employment, but the unemployment rate is at a 50-year low, 3.5 percent, and it could be even heading lower this year. In fact, that’s the dominant forecast. Some folks have the unemployment rate at the low-3, 3.2, 3.3 by the end of this year. And while the unemployment rate is by no means the only indicator you’d want to look at, it leaves out a lot, and we’ll get to that. [chuckles] I don’t mean to tinge my good news with bad news already, but as an economist, I always got to see the glass both half empty, half full.

VALLAS: It’s okay. Lawyers do the same thing.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, but there is no question in my mind, and in fact, it’s something I’ve been documenting for decades, that when the job market tightens up, the most economically-vulnerable people and places disproportionately benefit. And we’ve seen this in the poverty statistics, which while still too high and while still showing real pockets of despair in different places in the country, have come down significantly. We’ve seen it in low wages that have ticked up in real terms. Part of that’s the minimum wage. It’s another sub-national good news piece. But the benefits of full employment, they’re pulling people into the job market who otherwise wouldn’t be there if there were more slack. And I believe that’s going to persist through the rest of the year.

VALLAS: Well, definitely a good news place to start and something that obviously is hugely important, particularly for marginalized workers who are often the first fired and the last hired for the reasons you note. Angela, over to you, what are you most excited about to kick us off with?

HANKS: I’ll pick up on one of the last things that Jared mentioned, some of the activity that’s happening below the national level. So, we’ve seen a lot of activity in 2019, actions by states that are coming to bear in 2020. So, for example, January 1st, 2020, this year, 24 states raised the minimum wage. We have stronger labor protections being implemented in California for most classified workers. New York is ending cash bail. And this year, formerly incarcerated, disenfranchised folks in places like Kentucky and Florida will be able to cast votes. So, you know, in spite of the gloom and doom that I know we’re going to talk about at the federal level, there are some exciting things happening. And I think you do see some real genuine movement toward things like raising wages, building worker power, ensuring justice for all, which is really exciting.

VALLAS: Yeah, amen. And I have to say in a lot of ways, it’s the states that are sort of getting a lot of us through in this current administration for so many reasons. I’ll throw in one other policy I’m really excited to see gain further traction in state legislative sessions this year, in addition to some of the ones you note, which folks will know is close to my heart, and that is the spread of automated record clearing with states on a bipartisan basis increasingly following in Pennsylvania and Utah’s lead and footsteps by automating their record-clearing processes with these clean slate laws that were now starting to gain traction in the states. New York, Washington State, Louisiana, Connecticut, North Carolina. And others that are maybe a little too early to name are all starting to advance these types of policies in coming legislative sessions in recognition that a criminal record shouldn’t be a life sentence to poverty and that petition-based processes mean, for a record clearing like expungement and sealing, that vast numbers of people who are eligible to have their records cleared never do because they can’t afford a lawyer. So, I just wanted to throw that in as another policy I’m really excited to see continue to spread through the states in addition to several of the ones that you just named, Angela.

Jared, what else are you excited about, staying with the good news for a little bit.

BERNSTEIN: Sure. So, this one, I have to qualify. It’s a somewhat or slightly more woke economics. Now, many in the economics profession who’ve dominated policy for so many years basically are coming out of a very implicitly conservative model where government is almost always a negative, taxes are always bad, and anything you do to help low-income people is going to hurt the economy, while anything you do to help rich people is going to improve it. So, just really, from my perspective, a very upside down view of economics from the perspective of social welfare. But over the last few years, particularly since the financial crash, when it was just blazingly clear, undeniably clear that the old models failed big time, and people who should’ve seen things coming didn’t, there’s been a rethinking of some of the fundamentals. And I’ve written about this pretty extensively.

And the way it plays out in areas of our interest — in poverty, inequality, wage and income trends — is the idea that, for example, we can have a much lower unemployment rate than we thought without worrying about inflationary spirals. And this has allowed the Federal Reserve, who is acting in ways that prior feds did not, in ways that translate into more progressive outcomes — I already talked about some of the benefits of full employment — that’s really helpful for people in the bottom half. And in fact, you can hear Jay Powell, who’s the chair of the Federal Reserve, say given how tight the labor market is, in the absence of inflationary pressures, we’ve been able to run hotter for longer, bring more people in. That’s one example, but there are many more. So, for example, there’s been this notion that budget deficits must be stamped out immediately because they’re going to put too much pressure on interest rates and lead to economic overheating. So, if you thought you could do something useful with the budget deficit, you better think again. That idea has also been somewhat banished from public finance economics. Now, that’s a bit of a double-edged sword because you can build deficits for good reasons. Basically, you can engender bad debt, which is how I would describe the Trump tax cuts, or you can do it for good reasons: investing in people, in the safety net, in productive infrastructure, in green activities. And so, but that has the potential to deliver some important degrees of freedom to something that heretofore has been a horribly cramped debate.

VALLAS: And Angela, I’m sure you probably have a lot to say about that. And I don’t know if that connects to maybe the next thing you’re excited about.

HANKS: It absolutely does. This was number two on my list as well. So, I totally agree with Jared. I think the thing that I am most excited about going into this new year, in this new decade is that it does seem to feel like we are on the precipice of this paradigm shift. You know, for the last 40 years or more, depending on how you want to count it, we’ve been in, sort of our economic worldview has been dominated by a conservative or neoliberal ideology, and it seems like we’re at the point where things are finally starting to change. I think that that is certainly not an accident. I think that has been due to a concerted effort by many folks in the, economists, folks in the policy and research space, folks who are doing movement work on the ground. But it does seem like the way we are thinking and talking about the economy is different.

So, for example, earlier this year, Heather Boushey wrote a book that essentially pulls together all of the most recent and cutting-edge research on inequality that demonstrates how corrosive it is to our economy. And that is really not only a new idea and sort of helps us make a more coherent argument around why inequality is something that we must address with policy. But it also demonstrates that we have all of this economic research. It’s not just that we should do this because it’s more fair or just. And of course, those reasons are important as well. But it’s also good for the economy, and it’s good economics. So, I think that’s really encouraging.

And again, I think at the policy and grassroots level, we’ve just seen more folks who are looking to bigger, bolder policies and are thinking less about what the government can do, what we can do when we build public power and deploy it in strategic ways. And I think that’s something that’s emerging. I don’t think that we fully have gone through a paradigm shift, and I think that there’s a lot of work to do by all of the actors that I’ve mentioned. But this is something that we’ll be working on in the coming years, and I know a lot of folks across the movement will be as well. And I think that’s really encouraging.

VALLAS: And Jared, I think you had more to add as well.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, I want to make a quick point and then pose a question, if I may, to both you, Rebecca, and to Angela. The point I wanted to make is that one way you’re seeing this reflected — and I don’t think either Angela or I want to overdo the extent to which economics is waking up — but is some real contemplation about the lack of diversity in the economics field with much more attention to people of color and women. So, that’s been a real plus.

I liked Angela’s phrase that we’re on the precipice of a paradigm shift. And it leads me to ask Angela and also you, Rebecca, because you think this way more clearly than I do, is what will it take to push us off that precipice, if that’s the right word? What will it take so that we don’t backslide into the old ways? And that this somewhat renegade movement because, again, I think both Angela and I would agree this is not a dominant force in the field yet, could really come to fruition. One idea I’ll throw out is it has a lot to do with who wins the next election. So, that’s one point without getting into names. But I wonder if the two of you have any thoughts about that.

VALLAS: Amen. Angela, I’ll let you take a first crack there.

HANKS: So, I think that’s absolutely right. Of course, we have an election this year, and that will be consequential for the policies we enact thereafter. But I do think that there’s other work that can happen both in the meantime and in the aftermath. Like I mentioned, I think that certainly the economics profession and sort of the policy wonk-think tank world has been a core part of it. But I do really want to emphasize that I think one of the things that Groundwork has done over the last year is go out and speak to progressive leaders in communities across the country. And one thing that I’ve just become more and more convinced of is that these are the folks who are really driving so much of this paradigm shift work. They’re working across a bunch of different areas of economic justice. And I think, as we’ve sort of asked them what they think a progressive economic worldview would look like, they’ve been incredibly helpful in helping us think about how we can create a worldview that centers inclusion, security, dignity, and growth. And I think that there’s a lot of energy and knowledge there, and I hope that we continue to encourage and foster that and support it in the ways that we can. Because certainly, there are things in our national politics and even state and local politics that make it incredibly hard to sort of enact the policy change that we need to see. But I think the paradigm shift is about more than the political sphere. It’s about sort of changing minds about how the economy does work and how it should work and how we should be deploying public power, how we should be curbing private power, how we should be ensuring a sense of belonging for everyone in this country. And I think that there’s a lot of energy around that and a lot of room to grow.

VALLAS: Amen to all of that. And I think the only thing I would add — and obviously, the election is going to be hugely influential here for the direction we head and whether it’s continuing along this trajectory or whether it ends up being sort of two steps forward, two steps back — I would add that, and this is something I know, Angela, you bang your head against the wall about routinely, and so do you, Jared, and I feel like we all see each other tweet about this all the time, right, is how we talk about the economy, what the economy means, what is a strong economy? How do we define that, is really at the crux of this. Because to the extent that we continue to allow the kind of Very Serious People, capital VS and P, to define a strong economy as one in which we have headline statistics like stock market gains or the unemployment numbers —

BERNSTEIN: Or even just GDP.

VALLAS: Or even GDP, right. Or just thinking about, “economic growth” in those term as the four corners of what a strong economy looks like and fail to acknowledge and center who the economy is working for and whether the prosperity that we’re seeing at the very top or in those overall headline statistics is truly shared. That, to me, is going to be at the heart of whether we really can jump off that precipice into the next era with both feet. And I’m optimistic because of a lot of the work that both of you guys are doing, but in particular, the increased centering of the voices and the leadership of people who are actually impacted by inequality. I think it’s going to be critical to making that jump.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, when somebody asks me, “How’s the economy doing?” which they do, I say, “Well, whose economy are you talking about?” I also want to mention one other group in this quest to jump with both feet [laughs] off the precipice. And that’s the funding community.

VALLAS: Yeah.

BERNSTEIN: Some progressive funders have really stepped up in this area of rethinking economics, and that’s super important.

VALLAS: So, we’re going to take a quick break, come back with a little bit more of the good, and then we’re going to head into the, unfortunately, the bad and the ugly because we have to. So, don’t go away. More Off-Kilter after the break with Jared Bernstein and Angela Hanks. [hip hop music break]

Welcome back. You’re listening to Off-Kilter. It’s our first episode of 2020, so we’re breaking down the good, the bad, the ugly of what we expect for the year ahead, and hell, the decade ahead, right? We’ll get to that, too with Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Angela Hanks over at the Groundwork Collaborative.

And I want to stay with the things you guys are excited about for just another minute before we head into the scary stuff, because there’s going to be plenty of that. And I’m actually kind of liking hearing the good news pieces! This is giving me a shot in the arm that I need for this year. So, Angela, anything else that you’re particularly excited about for this year?

HANKS: Yeah. So, I’ll pick up on something we just discussed before the break. I think this idea that traditional indicators aren’t actually great measures of how the economy is doing or, for instance, what the economy is, is an important one. And I think that represents a shift in our thinking as well. So, for example, I think if we’re talking about unemployment, the president has bragged about black unemployment being quite low, but it’s still at a rate that would be considered deeply concerning if white unemployment was at that rate. Similarly, if we look at investments in the stock market, most people are not invested in the stock market. That’s particularly true for black Americans. Just about a third of black adults have a retirement savings at all. And so, I think as we think about how to measure the economy, as I think about, frankly, what it is, I think it’s encouraging that we’re seeing a bit more nuance in the way that we present the statistics. But it does suggest to me that we have a ways to go in terms of how we think about what the economy is, who it’s for, and what it means for someone to be doing well in it.

VALLAS: Amen. And so, Jared, you’re going to get the last opportunity to be excited for 2020 before we go doom and gloom.

BERNSTEIN: Well, first of all, on that last point, one thing that comes to mind, I’ve written a bit about this, is the idea of factoring environmental degradation into our measures of the economy. Listeners may not know this, but if a global-warming induced weather event destroys a town, and that town gets rebuilt, which actually happens — I’m not making that stuff up. It’s actually happening as we speak — that’s a plus for GDP. Because its gross domestic product, not net. And so, I’m very much on board with this idea.

Well, you know, my third thing was already talked about some, which is this is a progressive policy’s happening at the nonfederal level. But I did want to underscore one that didn’t get mentioned because it’s so important to me. And this is Washington State’s lifting of the overtime threshold. This was actually an Obama-era idea that I worked on with others, and we had a pretty good threshold. By the way, you raise the threshold so that more people who should be getting time and a half for overtime actually get it. And we’ve talked a lot about minimum wages and how they’ve really helped low-income people. And that’s absolutely true. It’s actually harder to think of kinds of policies like that that reach the middle class because the minimum wage doesn’t reach up that high. Raising the overtime threshold does that, and the level to which Washington State took it up, I think it’s in the 80,000 range, is really good. It means that many, many more people will get overtime.

VALLAS: Hugely important and definitely a policy that doesn’t get nearly enough attention and that Trump actually got too much in the way of, I think, credit for when he did sort of a milquetoast, watered-down version of the Obama update that he stopped from taking effect.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah. Just to throw a number on that, Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute estimated that relative to the Obama proposal, the Trump one leaves out about seven million people.

VALLAS: Yeah. Not an accident. And him trying to get some cover for doing something he claims helps his forgotten man and forgotten woman, but obviously, a lot fewer of them.

So, with that as sort of our initial tranche of good news, things we’re looking forward to in the year ahead, we, of course, also have to do the doom and gloom piece, right? And there’s no shortage of that with this —

BERNSTEIN: Boo!

VALLAS: [laughs] — with this current administration. So, I’m going to ask you both also, kind of a similar question of the top three things that you’re most worried about for the year ahead as folks are kind of getting their bearings post-holiday break and trying to remember what is it that they should be watching this year that could potentially be really devastating when it comes to folks who are struggling to make ends meet? And then, Angela, I’m going to let you kick the section off.

HANKS: I have to say, I started out attempting to write three and then just sort of went down a rabbit hole with all my various concerns. You know, I think to me, I have sort of an overarching concern about the attacks to come and the attacks we can’t anticipate. So, just to recap some of the places we’ve been in the last year: in the last several months alone, the administration has taken steps to shrink the inflation measure for poverty so fewer people would be candidate poor. As you know, Rebecca, and I know you had some folks on the show a couple of months ago to talk about it, we’ve done some research that actually, or supported some research that shows that we’re actually underestimating the inflation rate for people at the bottom of the income distribution. So, not only are we already underestimating the number of people who fall below the federal poverty line by almost over 3 million, this would actually make it even worse and throw many, many more people into uncertainty and deep poverty. So, I’m concerned about an administration that would’ve done that.

They’ve also thrown hundreds of thousands of people off of SNAP. More recently, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken steps to slow desegregation efforts that the Obama administration put into place. We’ve seen sort of a myriad of targets placed on immigrants in various ways over the last several years. So, anyway, I would say that the doom and gloom part of me is deeply concerned, because while I’m optimistic that we can make change and make progress and sort shift the ideology, we do have people who are experiencing material harm right now. And just given how creative this administration has been in the ways that it has decided to attack and harm marginalized groups, I’m just deeply worried about what they could do given another year.

VALLAS: Creative it has been, indeed, and not in the good way. And since you mentioned SNAP, Angela, we’ve covered this a lot on this show. But for folks who are kind of trying to get their bearings for what comes this year, just a quick update on the SNAP front. April 1st of this year, April 1st, 2020, is the effective date for the first of Trump’s regulatory attacks on the SNAP program to take effect. That, of course, is the rule that is estimated to take food assistance away from about 700,000 unemployed and underemployed workers, basically as a penalty for not being able to find work or to get enough hours at their job. We can expect final rules to also be issued on the other two attacks that came on the SNAP program last year, combined, the Urban Institute tells us that about 3.7 million people will lose food assistance if all three rules take effect. And that doesn’t include the 1 million kids who will lose automatic access to free and reduced-price school lunch.

The thing to watch for this year is going to be litigation for sure. Lots of advocates out there trying to figure out how to stop these rules from advancing. And it feels important to say yet again, as just sort of a reminder, these are all policies that Congress blocked on a bipartisan basis in the farm bill debate in 2018. And so, it’s another instance of Trump deciding to do an end-run around Congress when he doesn’t get his way, just like he did with healthcare sabotage after ACA repeal and Medicaid cuts failed legislatively. So, I’ve been hearing a lot from my legal aid friends across the country all trying to figure out what they can do to prevent people from losing food assistance, whether that’s creating community service slots or advocating for increased job training opportunities. But there’s going to be a lot of pain if these rules are allowed to take effect, and it’s going to be some of the most marginalized workers who end up bearing the brunt. And just another reminder that this is a $1.40 per meal in food assistance that we’re talking about, that this president is so completely hell bent on taking away from people. So, just a quick SNAP update for people who are trying to get their bearings.

Jared, give us a little bit of [chuckling] your doom and gloom, if you will.

BERNSTEIN: Well, the continued attack on the safety net was on my list, too. And just listening to you go through that, I was reminded of the sense that I get all too frequently these days that the administration just consistently seems to be trying to solve the problem that poor people have too much and rich people don’t have enough. And anyone who’s spent a minute in reality knows that that’s completely upside down.

Let me say something that your conversation just there, especially the two of you, were talking about how creative the administration. So, I was in an administration, in the Obama administration, when the Tea Party got to town, where we essentially lost the congressional majority, and we were sent off to scurry into this room and think about what we could do without Congress. And I must say, we came up with a pretty short and unimpressive list. Now, I’m kind of a Keynesian-oriented economist, so once you lose the purse strings, that kind of leaves you somewhat bereft. But I must say that I have been struck by how much this administration has done in an end-run around Congress.

Now, you make a great point, which is that when we had our meetings, one lawyer would say, “You can’t do that.” And then we get another lawyer, and she would say, “You can’t do that.” And once we got three, we’d say, “Okay, we can’t do that.” This administration says, forget about that. Get me Rudy or something like that.

VALLAS: [laughs]

BERNSTEIN: They don’t have that same constraint. And that is a real constraint. And as you may, even though the public charge, the attack on immigrants and their use of the safety net has, I think, been stayed in some courts as we speak. So, that’s a positive development. But flipping the doom on its head for a second, I actually have been convinced — this wasn’t a position I started from because I don’t like legislating that’s not legislating. I don’t like doing policy this way — I’ve been convinced that that’s what the next administration should do if they are of the other party. And that those extra degrees of freedom that we’ve learned from Trump should not be something that we leave on the table going forward. Okay. Sorry.

My doom. So, I said earlier that that the modal forecast, the most common forecast, is for unemployment to be even lower at the end of this year. Well, you have to introduce the possibility — I think it’s a low probability. maybe below 20 percent — that there’s a recession. And that is something we are just not ready for. I mean this administration is singularly not up to the task of quickly, smartly, and effectively implementing the fiscal policy, especially on the discretionary side, that would need to occur. The Federal Reserve is a, that’s one of the few institutions left that actually is, I think, meeting their remit quite, quite intelligently and with great empirical insight. But they’re limited because the interest rate that they control is already pretty low. Now, there’s other stuff that they can do, and that will help. I happen to have a piece in The Washington Post today about this very topic.

VALLAS: Which we will make sure is on the nerdy syllabus page, of course.

BERNSTEIN: Please do. But the idea that there’s a recession out there with this administration and this Congress is a scary one.

VALLAS: So, since you guys both mentioned public charge, and I feel like it’s probably worth hopping in and sharing a little bit of an update on that front as well, because that’s going to be another emerging story to continue to watch throughout 2020. So, Jared, you mentioned that the public charge rule had happily been blocked in the courts, and that was one of the good news things that happened towards the end of last year. Multiple preliminary injunctions were issued by federal courts. And actually, there was some news just this week coming out of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. They denied the Trump administration’s motion to basically temporarily, lift one of the injunctions. And that’s important because, in layman’s terms, what that basically means is that the reg is still blocked. Public charge is still blocked from taking effect nationwide, a hugely important thing just to keep in mind. A lot more is set to come in the weeks and months ahead. There are cases that are moving through multiple different federal courts on expedited schedule. So, we could actually see decisions on several of the appeals that are currently pending in just the next couple of months.

But I bring up this update not just to say watch the courts, watch the courts, watch the courts, which you should be doing. But also just for folks who are listening who may be impacted, immigrant families in particular and advocates who work with immigrant families and are wondering, what does this mean? How do I advise people on this right now? Just keep in mind, the public charge reg remains blocked. The public charge rules have not changed. And it is critical that immigrant families get the facts that they need to make sure that they’re making the best decisions for themselves and for their families. This is also a great time for Congress to be hearing from families about how this rule would hurt them, because ultimately, it is probably going to be up to Congress to act if the rule does end up taking effect. So, just hopping in with that as a little public service announcement for folks wondering what is going on with public charge?

Angela, what more do you have in the way of doom and gloom? You said you had a long list, so now I’m a little bit worried [laughing] you’re going to bring us down even further!

HANKS: I won’t to spiral too much. I actually think I’ll pick up a little bit on two of the things that Jared mentioned. And I’ll start with this idea of a recession. I agree for all the reasons you mentioned, a recession right now with this administration in power would be a disaster for a variety of reasons. And I sincerely hope that we are not dealing with that this year because we are just ill-equipped, given the tools that it seems this administration would be likely to use. That said, I do think that for candidates, for folks who are aspiring to be in this position this time next year, I do think that it’s critical for candidates, for folks in the policy arena to be thinking about what we would do if this hits. This is a unique situation where there isn’t really an opportunity for states or localities to do a whole lot to guard against the recession. And so, it is really important that there is a strong federal government response, and it’s something that we have to be equipped to deal with. Certainly, not every recession is the Great Recession, and we just, in the last decade, lived through one that will probably hopefully be the greatest one of all of our lifetimes. But I do think that this is something that we can take seriously now and prepare for, should it happen in the year or the next two.

The other thing I’ll mention, Jared mentioned that this administration seems to believe that the problem is that the wealthy don’t have enough and that the poor have too much. And I think that that sort of hits on another one of my concerns, which is inequality. This president has, again, I think in a relatively short period of time, been able to worsen inequality with the 2017 tax law and all of the work he’s been doing to gut the safety net. So, in addition to giving folks at the top much, much more, he’s also been starving resources from folks at the bottom. And that feels like a big story to come out of this administration over the last several years, is that we are really deepening inequality in ways that are damaging for people right now and frankly, don’t make any economic sense. You know, there’s no reason why we’ve sort of given an almost 2 trillion dollar tax cut to people who are already wealthy when folks in this country are struggling to put food on the table. And the idea that that would create a stronger economy, I think one, is sort of laughable on its face. But two, just haven’t borne out in the last couple of years, right? We can see that that hasn’t made our economy stronger. It hasn’t made folks at the bottom or in the middle better off. All it’s done is allow folks at the top to hoard more wealth and, ultimately, political power. And so, I hope that we can take steps to reverse what he’s done, but I do think that I’m concerned about deepening inequality this year, and it’s something we should be on the lookout for.

VALLAS: Jared, I know you want to get in on that.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, I think I’m going to go to the happy place for a second.

VALLAS: Take us back to the happy place. I miss it.

BERNSTEIN: Back to the happy place. Everything Angela said is true. And one of the things that has occurred as a backlash to that is we’re hearing much more about progressive taxation than has really ever been the case in my lifetime in this business. And I’ve been doing this for more decades than I want to admit. We are hearing about ideas to significantly increase the tax base, the base at which we collect taxes from, and specifically from wealth. In this country and in many other countries, wealth, as opposed to income, largely goes untaxed. The only time you really get your wealth taxed is when you sell an asset, and that becomes a capital gain. So, you sell a share of stock or one of those great Picassos I know you have hanging in your living room.

VALLAS: You know me. [laughs]

BERNSTEIN: And you have to pay a tax, which, by the way, gets a favorable rate. It’s taxed less than your paycheck for most people. But otherwise, what’s called unrealized gains, meaning the appreciation of your assets, don’t get taxed at all. Well, we’ve heard ideas from not just Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who you’d expect that, but we’ve heard them from pretty much all the candidates ways in which we might — They don’t go as far, they don’t all go the same distance. But some include a more robust estate tax. Some include an idea of taxing financial transactions. Again, a very progressive idea. So, the idea, the backlash among progressives and even moderates to the story that Angela just told has been an inspiring one. We’ll have to see where that gets. Of course, that’s a political question. But at least it’s on the table, and I think useful way. And again, by the way, we see a lot of economic scholars, well-placed economic scholars, advocating for these ideas. And I think that’s a real plus.

VALLAS: We do indeed. I’m going to close out our doom and gloom section by noting one additional end-run around Congress that Trump is trying to move forward that really hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, given that it’s a major backdoor attack on Social Security. And the press has mostly been sitting this one out. So, just really hoping to get it a little bit more attention. We actually had an episode devoted to this just a few weeks back right before the holidays. So, go take a listen to me talking with Rebecca Cokley, who runs CAP’s Disability Justice Initiative, and also our friend Matt Cortland, a disabled, chronically ill lawyer and himself an SSI beneficiary. The short version for anyone who hasn’t heard that episode and isn’t aware of what this particular proposal is, is Trump is basically proposing to force disability beneficiaries, folks who receive SSI or SSDI benefits, to reprove their disability every two years to keep their benefits. There’s about 2.6 million people who are estimated to be at risk of losing benefits under this policy if it takes effect. He’s doing it as another proposed rulemaking, which means there is an opportunity to comment. That comment deadline is January 31st. We’ll have a link, of course, on our nerdy syllabus page. And if you’re looking to learn more about what this rule would do, there’s actually a Twitter chat coming up this Sunday, January 12th, hosted by the CripTheVote community, Alice Wong and all of those great folks who are friends of the show. So, we’ll have more on the on the syllabus page as well about how you can participate.

But basically, the thing to know is disability benefits are the primary or even sole source of income for most SSI and DI beneficiaries. They average like $600 a month for SSI beneficiaries, a little over $1,000 a month for DI beneficiaries. That is what Trump is trying to take away from as many disabled folks as possible. And this isn’t a new idea. We actually watched this play out in the ’80s under Reagan. We had people dying by the thousands when they were losing their benefits that they still sorely needed. So, we know how this story ends, and Trump is trying to bring back the ’80s again in 2020 in ways that are going to hurt scores of folks with chronic illnesses and disabilities. So, just wanted to put in a plug for that, given the comment period coming to a close fairly soon.

So, we’re going to take another short break and be right back with Jared Bernstein and Angela Hanks talking 2020 and what’s on deck. Don’t go away. More Off-Kilter in just a few. [hip hop music break]

Welcome back to Off-Kilter. We are doing our first of 2020 episode, looking in crystal balls, taking a look at what might be coming down the pike. And I’ve been talking with Jared Bernstein over at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Angela Hanks, over at the Groundwork Collaborative, getting them to take out their crystal balls and help me out with this. And we’ve talked a little bit about the things folks are excited about for this year. We’ve talked about the things that are keeping us all up at night. And there’s no shortage of that. And I think Angela might’ve even had a longer list than I gave her an opportunity to name things from, because it was enough of a Debbie Downer report already.

So, we’re going to leave the negative there. And I’m going to switch gears a little bit and ask you guys, I mentioned up top, obviously impeachment and now the potential march to war are really dominating the news cycle, as they should in a lot of ways, but in ways that are squeezing out the space and the airtime for a lot of really critical stories and issues when it comes to poverty and equality and so forth. And so, I asked you guys to bring some of the critical stories and issues to follow this year that you’re worried are going to get buried. And Jared, I’m going to let you kick us off.

BERNSTEIN: Affordable housing shortage. This is something that I’ve been starting to look at and write about. I have a piece with housing experts Mark Zandi and Jim Parrott in a recent Washington Post. The idea is that in places where there’s the most opportunity — because we actually have an opportunity inequality problem in this country: there are lots of places where people are stuck, and they just don’t have the kinds of economic opportunities they need to lift themselves out of poverty or into the middle class — housing is actually pretty affordable in some of those areas. But because of the disparity of where opportunity has been growing most quickly and a whole set of issues, including zoning and inadequate supply of affordable housing, very much policy issue, there’s a serious housing shortage when it comes to the ability of low- and middle-income people to safely house themselves.

One very simple way to understand this is that median income over the past 10 years or so has been pretty flat, while median rents are up double digit, and median housing costs even faster. And that’s a problem that’s really slipped under the radar. Interestingly, all of these progressive Democratic candidates have talked about health care and inequality and wages and jobs. Haven’t heard much about this affordable housing crisis. Haven’t heard enough, in my view.

VALLAS: And I have to say, I’ve been excited to hear it’s starting to get some attention in the 2020 primary debate, right? I think more housing than I think I can remember hearing in an election, but totally agree. Not nearly enough, given the nature of the crisis.

BERNSTEIN: And many of them actually have responsive policies, which is good to know. But I do think we need to elevate that more.

VALLAS: Angela, what are you following that you’re worried is getting buried this year?

HANKS: I’m not totally confident in my predictive power; however, I would say I have a broad sense of what I would like to see elevated this year as we think about the future of economic policy, inequality, and poverty. I think the thing that I would love to see more of is thinking about the interconnectedness of all of these things, right? So, as we think about attacks to the safety net, efforts to enrich those at the top, efforts to re-segregate communities, all of these things that the administration is doing, I think my hope is the story at the end of the year is both about the persistent attacks, but also about the economic structures that are creating the environment that we’re in now. If we can keep a consistent conversation going on inequality, on structural racism, on corporate concentration, I think it helps us on all of these fronts that we know we’ll be fighting on. And so, it’s easy for a conversation about structural economic change writ large to get buried when there are so many urgent fronts on which we’re fighting to help marginalized folks. But also, like you mentioned, impeachment, war, there are all of these things that are really critical and timely. But that’s something that I’m hoping doesn’t get lost, because I do think that that’s sort of crucial to advancing this paradigm shift.

VALLAS: I’ll throw in one more that I’m particularly excited about, and you guys may have additional stories and issues to follow this year. One for me is the immense traction that we are starting to see the right to counsel movement gain. Now, of course, I’m putting on my former and forever legal aid lawyer hat when I when I say this, so maybe you’re not surprised to hear me name this one. But just really tremendous momentum happening on right to counsel at the local level right now. Philly, late last year, became the latest city to enact a right to counsel ordinance in eviction cases in recognition that people should not be losing their homes just because they can’t afford lawyers. And meanwhile, we’re actually starting to see right to counsel show up, I was going to say left and right, but I don’t know that that’s fair in presidential candidates’ platforms.

BERNSTEIN: Left.

VALLAS: Just left. But what I would frankly love to see, and the story that I hope emerges in 2020, is a serious push, not just for right to counsel in eviction cases, right? So, hugely important as part of that housing conversation you were talking about, Jared —

BERNSTEIN: Right.

VALLAS: — but in all cases where basic human needs are at stake. We should have a right to counsel for — and this is the phrasing advocates often use in this space — all civil cases that involve the potential loss of shelter, of sustenance, of safety, of health, and I’ll throw child custody in there as well. Really, really twisted that people can go into court and not have lawyers in there at the risk of losing their kids. So, that’s one of the stories I’m really excited to watch in 2020. All right. Taking off my legal aid lawyer hat there.

BERNSTEIN: But there’s another one that I think could get buried this year. And there’s been some stuff in the paper lately about this, but it kind of comes and goes. I think it’s really important. I think there’s the potential for an increase in this ongoing problem of tax avoidance and tax evasion. As you might expect, this is a problem for those at the top of the scale who have the most skin in the game in this regard, because we still have somewhat of a progressive system in place. And we’ve seen much-increased avoidance, which is where you manipulate your taxes so you pay the least — but that’s legal — and evasion, which is illegal, you just don’t pay taxes owed. And I saw a number just the other day that for every extra dollar that we provide to the enforcement bureau in the IRS, our tax collecting agency, we’ll collect four. So, that’s a four to one bang for buck. But the sad part of the story is that we’ve actually been defunding the IRS in precisely this way for many years on end. So, we’re leaving hundreds of billions on the table by facilitating avoidance and evasion. And I’m afraid that’s going to continue and get buried if we don’t elevate it.

VALLAS: And of course, if you listen to Republicans, the thing to worry about when it comes to taxes is low-income people, right, and the earned income tax credit, which they love to paint as rife with all kinds of capital waste, fraud, and abuse. But, of course, they’re very happy to turn a blind eye when it comes to all of what you’re talking about, Jared.

BERNSTEIN: Yeah, and it’s not even, it’s more than turning a blind eye. I would argue that the cuts to the IRS enforcement budget is really a shadow tax cut. It’s really a shadow effort to allow for more avoidance and evasion.

VALLAS: Anything else you’re excited to follow, critical stories that are at risk of getting buried this year, Angela?

HANKS: I will say that one of the critical stories that I think is perpetually under-covered but I’m excited to follow this year is sort of looking at the economic views of black and Latinx folks and other marginalized communities. So, I think that one of the challenges we have, as I mentioned before, is a lot of our traditional economic indicators, at least at the top lines, don’t tend to incorporate these folks. And often, these are the groups who are left out of economic policymaking, even though they tend to be most affected. So, we did some polling over the summer that just asked black and Latinx people their views on the economy and really focused on kitchen-table issues that people were concerned about. And the results were really interesting, and I would love to see more of that come into sort of the traditional economic conversation over the next year.

I mentioned retirement earlier. Retirement was a top-tier issue for black adults. For Latinx folks, it was healthcare. And I really think that if we can listen more to impacted communities and report more on the specific challenges, kitchen-table issues that they’re concerned with, it can both help guide our policymaking, and I think, tell a more nuanced story about where the economy is.

VALLAS: Amen. And I was so fascinated to dig through that polling when you guys did it. That actually connects to kind of my last story that I’m excited to watch this year before I make you guys take out your crystal balls for one last round, which is the growing awareness that I’m seeing, that many of us are seeing, among presidential candidates, among policymakers, elected officials, and the general public about how every policy issue is a disability policy issue. I know this is something I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for a long time, as well as many others coming out of the disability community. But I have to say, it’s truly incredible, and I’m actually pinching myself just a little bit. We’ve seen pretty much every major 2020 presidential hopeful come out with a dedicated disability policy plan, and each one kind of more robust and expansive than the last. And we really do actually hear candidates starting to talk about every policy issue as a disability policy issue, recognizing one in five Americans, one in four Americans, depending on surveys, have a disability. And so, whether it’s education or criminal justice or healthcare, those are all disability issues as well.

And part of what I’ve been incredibly excited to see coming out of some of those platforms is programs that have gotten ignored for a tremendously long time, like SSI, finally getting the attention that they deserve. We’ve seen multiple candidates actually propose major reforms to update and strengthen the SSI program, which has been left to wither on the vine for upwards of 25 years, and even going so far as outright elimination of that program’s asset limit and its marriage penalties so that people with disabilities can marry the people that they love. And I want to give a shout out to my dear friend Matt Cortland, who I mentioned before, a chronically ill, disabled lawyer and an SSI beneficiary who is one of those people who hasn’t been able to marry the love of his life because of those outdated SSI rules. Really excited to watch in this coming year how disability really starts to take its rightful place as part of a serious policy conversation and something of a mandate.

So, in the last section of this conversation, which I wish I had all day for, you guys are so fun to do this with —

BERNSTEIN: If we keep talking, we’ll get through the whole year and see if our forecast came true.

VALLAS: [laughs] And then we can do a lookback, right?

BERNSTEIN: [chuckles]

VALLAS: So, want to close by sort of looking back on the past decade and asking you guys the question, what was the story of the decade? What defined the decade? And it could be fun to actually get a little bit into what did the econ wonks maybe get right versus wrong in some of their predictions about what was to come? And Jared, I’ll let you kick this section off.

BERNSTEIN: There are a lot of candidates here. Let me tick off a couple. One is that it became clear on a much broader political scale something that myself and other progressive economists have been talking about back in the days when I started working at the Economic Policy Institute, lo these many decades ago. And that’s that you can’t ignore people left behind by global trends. Both Democrats and Republicans basically argued for years that if you’re hurt by globalization or technology is passing you by, that’s basically your fault. And free trade and more technology is always better, and it always boosts those kinds of indicators we were talking about. So, it’s a very aggregate perspective. And you better get yourself some training or something like that. And the policy elites would wash their hands and say they’re done. Well, we, and it’s not just us. There are numerous other countries who are stuck in this, in what is really in most cases, a highly regressive, faux populism movement, which is tilting very hard against elites, but also against immigrants and people of color. We’ve seen that that’s just not a plausible model and that people in places who’ve been left behind are suffering market failures that have to be addressed by public policy.

The second one, and I want to be brief here so we can get Angela in here, is that we learned once, and we should’ve learned this in the 1960s, but we learned again that we can reform healthcare. Progressive healthcare reform is possible. You can argue that the ACA didn’t go far enough. But if you simply look at its impact on insurance coverage, you see a decline in the uninsurance rate that is the largest we’ve seen since we introduced Medicare and Medicaid. So, again, we should’ve learned that lesson back then, but we’ve learned that we can reform healthcare. And there’s more work to be done there, obviously.

VALLAS: And obviously, a huge part of the conversation in 2020, not one of the stories getting buried for sure. But it deserves the attention it’s getting. Angela, what are you thinking, looking back on the 2010s, if we’re calling it that? What defined the decade?

HANKS: Yes, I’ll agree. There are many things to choose from, and there are more positive things that I’ll mention later on. I will say for me and I think a lot of my peers, the recession was sort of the defining moment of the decade. Certainly, the 2010s was mostly after it officially ended. But for folks who were coming into the labor market during that time and for folks who were in the labor market and were pushed out during the recession, that really seemed to be sort of the lasting moment that affected so many people’s lives in really critical ways. So, I think that’s both something that has, I think, changed people’s lives and personal lives in terms of their income and employment and housing and all those things. But I think it also helped shape our ideology around both how to respond to recessions and what policymaking can do. You know, how we can go even further to wield public power, how we can go even further to use the strength of the federal government. And so, I think it’s both tremendously devastating in terms of the way that we think about what people lost. But I also think it was sort of this turning point in how we think about the economy and public policy going forward.

VALLAS: I’m going to add in a couple of things that to me have been really positive points of the past decade to make this not just doom and gloom, which I have now been accused by Jared as specializing in. So, I’m going to prove you wrong. But a couple of things to me that really define the 2010s that were really positive in a lot of ways. Criminal justice reform, this immense growing awareness. It’s now conventional wisdom, no matter what your political affiliation is, no matter whether or not you’ve been touched by the system, that we have a broken criminal justice system, that mass incarceration needs to go the way of the past, that tough on crime is sort of dead, right? We need to be smart on crime. And this tremendous emergence of bipartisanship and that the strange bedfellows coalitions that have emerged of folks who don’t agree on anything else pushing for reforms where there’s a lot that they see eye to eye on that’s really flowed upward from the states. That to me has been a big part of the past decade and with a lot more of that story still to write in the year and years ahead.

And I want to add in also Social Security. What an amazing story in such a relatively short period of time in the past probably six, seven years to move past a debate that was wholeheartedly about whether or not to privatize Social Security and into a place where we’re now debating how much to expand the program. Social Security expansion has really become kind of the mainstream position of the, at least, the Democratic Party. And that to me in a lot of ways offers a tremendous model for progressive advocates wanting to figure out how to shift the Overton window on programs that have been in the crosshairs for incredibly long periods of time, sometimes on a bipartisan basis, unfortunately, like SNAP, where the expansion conversation is not just a way to try to actually engender the popular opinion towards expanding benefits, but is also really in a lot of ways kind of the best kind of defense that we have. The best offense being the, or the best defense being a good offense, because it changes the nature of the conversation towards what we should be talking about, the inadequacy of a program, the importance of those benefits, and gets away from the sort of imperative of, well, we can’t afford it, and we need to we need to cut it. So, excited to see that really have tremendous model potential for programs like SNAP and other. But Jared might disagree with me. You look quizzical over there!

BERNSTEIN: Yeah. Yeah. No, I [chuckles]…. This is the first pushback of the discussion. And it may be mostly an inside the beltway thing. I am a creature of the swamp. There are, from my perspective, a lot, certainly too many — they’re mostly Republicans — powerful politicians, mostly in the Senate, but also in the House who really walk around thinking, we’ve got to cut Social Security, and we’ve got to cut Medicare. Now, I think you have a point, which is that the politics of that have kind of redounded against that view. I mean, you have a Republican president who has pledged not to cut that stuff —

VALLAS: Although he’s breaking that promise every way he can.

BERNSTEIN: Exactly. That was what I was going to say, that you can’t believe already says. [laughs] I don’t know how much weight you should put on that. I just continually, I mean, I am literally in, I was testifying on the Hill a couple of weeks ago on the House Budget Committee, and there were numerous people arguing: look, we have to face up to entitlement cuts as the way forward. So, just a little pushback there.

VALLAS: I want to be clear. I am totally with you that Republicans are still there. But I think there’s this general public awareness now of where the American people are is wanting to expand.

BERNSTEIN: They’ve always been there. Social Security and Medicare are about the most popular government programs that’ve ever — Even in the Obama administration, we had some not-great ideas about cutting back on them. And then, you know, it polled terribly.

VALLAS: But yet we still saw Democrats joining forces with Republicans time and again to take seriously that, “entitlement cuts were necessary.”

BERNSTEIN: That’s my point, yeah.

VALLAS: And so, I think that’s so — I think we’re violently agreeing mostly.

BERNSTEIN: [laughs]

VALLAS: We’re maybe tinkering around the edges. But you were going to go ahead with another —

BERNSTEIN: I just have one other thing.

VALLAS: Yeah.

BERNSTEIN: You know, in the course of our conversation, I’d be interested in getting Angela in on this, is we haven’t said much about climate change. One of the, you asked for predictions, so yeah, I agree with, Angela, that predictions are worth what you pay for them, which is nothing in this case. It is possible, I think it’s even probably plausible, that the damage done by climate change over the next 10 years becomes simply too costly to ignore. You have an Australian prime minister who is in a lot of trouble for ignoring them. Certainly, the current administration does the same thing. Strictly talking about economic kind of realities and the costs that will be engendered to people have of all parties, and particularly those who are least able to insulate themselves against this sort of thing, I predict — maybe this is wishful thinking on my part — but I predict that those costs become too costly to ignore. It may be too late. I hope not.

VALLAS: Hard to think of the decade ahead and not think of climate change being one of those defining issues. Angela, let’s take this and make it into a little bit of a segue so that we can close out with kind of looking ahead. Picking up on Jared’s point about climate change, what are you looking ahead and thinking will define the coming decade? What’s the 2020’s going to be remembered for?

HANKS: Yeah. So, one of the things that I think has been a hallmark of the end of this decade has been that some ideas that frankly, I think were considered fringe on the left have gone mainstream. And I think that’s really important and powerful, and I expect to see it continue in 2020. So, for example, if you told me seven or eight years ago that we would have presidential candidates talking about job guarantees and baby bonds and Green New Deal and reparations and…

BERNSTEIN: Medicare for all!

HANKS: Medicare for all [laughs], free college, student debt cancelation, I would not have believed you. I genuinely could not believe it, could not conceive of it because I don’t think that would’ve been possible even a couple of years ago. And so, I think that that has been a real shift in the conversation. And so, I think what that means is that it set us up for 2020, where we have to do a lot of thinking about all of these ideas and growing them. And I think that that is something we can look toward in the next several years, in particular is, okay, so we’re thinking outside of kind of our normal policy box about what the tools available to us are. And it starts to, it’s feeling like the solutions are starting to feel up to the magnitude of the challenges. I totally agree with Jared on climate change. It’s alarming that it’s proceeding at the pace it is and that we’re not taking action. And it seems like the proposals to tackle it are in the spirit of actually doing something meaningful to save the planet. So, I’m encouraged to see that, and I expect it to continue. But I really think there are some things that’ve gone mainstream that we have to treat this emergency.

VALLAS: I love that frame of previously fringe views now sort of being mainstream, which I think is sort of a better way of putting the point I was trying to make it about Social Security. But I love that frame, and I think you’re exactly right. So, it’s hard not to ask the question of what’s going to define the 2020’s if we don’t also ask the question of what would Trump being reelected mean for the economy?

BERNSTEIN: [chuckles]

VALLAS: And Jared, I know this is something you’ve been thinking a lot about. What does your crystal ball tell you?

BERNSTEIN: Well, it depends on whether we have a recession or not. So, over the next four years, certainly that’s a possibility. We already are into the longest expansion on record, but expansions don’t die of old age. They die of some imbalance developing. And at this point, it’s, I don’t see any of that sort of imbalance or bubble. But as we’ve said earlier, and we don’t have to rehearse that argument again, this administration will be singularly unprepared to deal with recession. And because the most vulnerable populations, which are often our key constituency here on the show, would be hurt most by a recession. I think that’s one of the biggest fears I have about the administration getting another four years.

The other one, though, is, again, something we’ve talked about, which is a continuation of the inequality trends. This administration is clearly guided by the stock market, by GDP, by a low unemployment rate. And I myself have argued that a low unemployment rate is a positive thing, but it leaves a lot of folks out. And again, Angela made, I think, very incisive comments about this earlier. And so, the factors, the structural factors, that are driving up inequality that not just in a market-driven sense, but an after-tax sense because of all the regressive tax changes, I think they would be doubled down upon so that we would end up with more inequality, less government revenues to do anything about it, much more unbalanced fiscal accounts so that we wouldn’t, if interest rates went up in particular, we would be very hard pressed to do anything about it because government would’ve been so shrunken and so abused that really the only institution in town left to help on the economy would be the Federal Reserve. And they’re not really targeting inequality the same way the kinds of micro and macro policies that we’ve been talking about here on the fiscal side would. So, those are some of my concerns.

VALLAS: And obviously, the election really looming, not that far off in a way that will determine a lot of what ends up happening in not just the next year, but the next decade and whether inequality remains an issue of our time or actually starts to become the thing that we’re all working together to address.

I’ve been speaking with Angela Hanks, the deputy executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, and Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former chief economist to Vice President Biden. I can’t thank you guys enough for coming in and for taking this look ahead at 2020 and what’s to come. And I guess I’m going to have to have you back on to see how we did when the year comes to an end.

BERNSTEIN: [chuckles] That’s the scary part.

HANKS: Oh boy.

ALL: [laugh]

VALLAS: Well, there will be a test! [laughs]

And that does it for this week’s episode of Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host Rebecca Vallas. The show is produced by Will Urquhart and David Ballard. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @OffKilterShow, and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the We Act Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

♪ I want freedom (freedom)

Freedom (freedom)

Now, I don’t know where it’s at

But it’s calling me back

I feel my spirit is revealing,

And now we just trynta get freedom (freedom)

What we talkin’ bout…. ♪