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Joe Biden is ramping up his attack on President Donald Trump’s stewardship of the economy, but beyond a few key advisers, it’s largely unclear who has the former vice president’s ear.
Biden on Thursday proposed new uses of the federal government’s power to bolster U.S. manufacturing and technology, calling for a $400 billion increase in government purchasing of American goods and services, plus $300 billion in new research and development in U.S. technology concerns, according to the Associated Press.
Who helped write the plan? That’s uncertain. The Biden campaign didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Biden, according to the New York Times, gets regular briefings from a group of advisers that includes at least three liberal economists: Jared Bernstein and Ben Harris, two former chief economists for Biden from his time in the White House, and Heather Boushey, who was the top economist for Hillary Clinton’s transition team when she was the Democratic nominee in 2016.
The same New York Times story said Biden is seeking input from more than 100 left-leaning economists and other researchers, but as the story says, there’s little clarity on who has influence over the presumptive Democratic nominee. What’s more, members of an economic policy committee that includes those experts are under rules aimed at ensuring their public silence, the Times said.
Biden’s Thursday speech is the first of a series in which he plans to shift his line of attack against Trump to the economy, the AP wrote. Biden will also in the coming weeks unveil an energy plan to combat the climate crisis and introduce a third package on what the campaign has dubbed the “caring economy,” with a focus on making child care and elder care more affordable and less of an impediment to working-age Americans.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
