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Biden officially confirms core members for economic team

President-elect Joe Biden confirmed picks for his diverse economic team. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman discusses.

Video Transcript

- President-elect Joe Biden has been busy naming people to some key positions over the weekend. We got some updates in terms of the all-female senior communications team he's put together with Jen Psaki as press Secretary. But now, President-elect Joe Biden also naming some key economic picks as well, as administration announcing that he's picked Neera Tanden, the current head of the center left think tank Center for American Progress to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

He's also tapped Princeton economist Cecilia Rouse as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. Keep in mind, that first one's going to require some confirmation here, as well as, of course Treasury Secretary, the pick there in Janet Yellen, also going to require that confirmation process. To join us now for more on what that will look like is Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman.

And Rick, I mean, some of these seems safe. Other ones, maybe not so much. But what are you making of the picks so far?

RICK NEWMAN: Right. So Biden announced three well-known economists for the Council of Economic Advisors. You mentioned Cecilia Rouse, also Jared Bernstein, and a third person Heather Boushey. So two women and one guy, that's a three-person panel. They're all well-known center left economists. And they do not have to be confirmed by the Senate. So they're just going to take those jobs.

For people wondering what is the Council of Economic Advisors do anyway? They do a lot of the technical work in the White House of forecasting and analyzing. And they produce this thing every year called the Economic Report of the President. Neera Tanden for the Office of Management and Budget is going to be more controversial. She would need confirmed, and there's a lot of scuttlebutt in the aftermath of this announcement that she's going to have a lot of trouble getting confirmed.

She has been an aide to Hillary Clinton since Hillary Clinton was First Lady in the White House in the 1990s. She then worked for Hillary Clinton when Hillary Clinton was a Senator, and she was a top advisor for Hillary Clinton's campaign for President in 2016. Which earned her a fair amount of enmity from Bernie Sanders and others who feel that the sort of Democratic machine and the Clinton machine really sidelined Bernie Sanders back in 2016.

She's also gone after a number of Republican senators and generated some bad blood. So she will get most Democratic votes in a confirmation hearing if it even gets that far in the Senate. But she might lose a couple of Democratic votes. And she could lose some Republican votes. So she may not get it.

And, you know, she's a product of Washington and an infighter. So she knows what she's in for. And we'll see how it plays out.

- Rick, you could argue that Joe Biden has played it pretty safe so far with some of these picks. Very experienced hands like Janet Yellen. But, you know, I wonder how much pressure he's facing from the more progressive wing of the Democratic party. You know, potential names like Bernie Sanders being floated around for labor, Elizabeth Warren for commerce.

Joe Biden seemed to hint last week that he doesn't want to go there, because they are senators. But what do you think the pressure looks like from The Left?

RICK NEWMAN: I think there's-- well, there's clearly a ton of pressure from The Left. The so-called progressive wing of the Democratic party. And you just outlined some of the things they want. In addition to that, they also want a real aggressive push on climate change. Something akin to the Green New Deal, which we've talked about on air a lot.

It's hard to see how Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders get appointed to a cabinet job. For one thing, both of those senators come from states that have Republican governors. They are moderate Republican governors, but presumably they would appoint a Republican as the replacement, at least, you know, for an interim period until it came around to a special election. So that would just complicate problems with what is probably going to be a Democratic minority in the Senate.

And it's not clear. They could even get the votes of, you know, some of the Republicans it would take to put them into the cabinet. So I think the progressive wing is fairly disappointed so far. They are not getting many of the appointments they would like. And the signals are that they're not going to get a lot of the policy action they would like to see as well.

- Yeah, and you wonder how much of that is already just coming through because of how those Senate races in Georgia, those runoffs are shaping up as well. Joe Biden potentially looking at still Republican control in that chamber. Maybe enjoying that fact a bit here as well. But Rick Newman, appreciate you taking the time to bring us the updates on those picks.

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