Biden's Economist: An Alternative Voice Tries to Get Heard in the White House.

• Author: Lydersen, Kari
• Position: Chief economic adviser Jared Bernstein - Essay

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When Jared Bernstein came Vice President Joe den's chief economic adviser, progressives had reason to cheer. He had built a prominent career at the labor-aligned Economic Policy Institute.

In his 2006 book, All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy , Bernstein talks about YOYOs and WITTs--that is, people who say "you're on your own" or those who believe "we're in this together." He advocates a WITT world, with ample safety nets and universal health care, where everyone has the right not only to the basic necessities but also to the modest luxuries and privileges that are expected in an affluent society.

To achieve this, he has proposed low-income tax breaks and government-sponsored progressive universalism, where "everybody gets something but the needy get the most," as described in a 2007 briefing paper.

During a September interview in his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Bernstein stressed the Administration's commitment to working people but downplayed his own politics, hesitating to describe himself even as a progressive economist.

"I would say I'm an economist who is deeply motivated by the following assertion: If the economy is growing but it's leaving people behind, something is broken and it's got to be fixed," he says. "I'm an economist and a person who believes that the folks who are contributing to the growth, the productivity of the economy, ought to experience those contributions as improving their living standards. And if they don't, something is broken and needs to be fixed. If that means progressive, then, yeah, I'm progressive."

(He was featured at the Center for American Progress's popular Progressivism on Tap series at the Busboys and Poets restaurant and gathering place in Washington in July.)

Bernstein says he has more in common with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers than people might think, claiming these colleagues have an overlooked dedication to the middle class and regular people.

"The goals I've been describing vis-à-vis what a real recovery looks like from the perspective of American families, those are goals deeply shared by every member of the economic team," he says. "I remember Larry Summers saying way back during the transition in one of our earliest meetings, 'Our success will be very much a function of how middle class families do.' And Tim--I think this is underreported--when Tim talks about financial markets, in his mind those markets are very connected to the middle class, to small entrepreneurs who are trying to get a foothold. The Wall Street...